


crack a smile (and cut your mouth)

by veronicassadboi



Series: rags to riches (or so they say) [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Ghoulies!Gladys, I dunno man I don't know how I feel about this at all but whatever, Kids and growing up and shit, Serpent!FP, Teen Angst, gladsythe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-01-23 13:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21320746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veronicassadboi/pseuds/veronicassadboi
Summary: “Come on, Darlin’, you know we’re made for each other…”Before he can watch where the knife went, his ears are ringing with the familiar crunch of his own nose echoing in his skull.He falls to the ground knees first, right hand keeping his face together as if it might fall apart, left hand in the dirt next to her feet. She looks down on him, red lips curling.Audible gasps surround them, hisses from Serpents and sniggers from Ghoulies make Gladys run her slick tongue across her teeth with a hubristic grin and a cocky edge when she bends down to FP’s level. “That fucking hurt!” He hisses.“Didn’t I tell you that I’d bring you to your knees?”FP’s head pounds with shitty comebacks, he watches her knees protrude from split, red fishnets and a chain dangles from her belt.Before he has time to think, he tugs on the belt chain, her unsteady body balancing shakily on her docs falls onto her knees. “Looks like you’re on your knees now, what do ya say?” He hisses in her ear as she leans with him. “You finally gonna shut that pretty mouth?”
Relationships: Alice Cooper & Gladys Jones, Alice Cooper/Gladys Jones, FP Jones II & Gladys Jones, FP Jones II/Gladys Jones
Series: rags to riches (or so they say) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552429
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	1. Truth or Dare

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Krewlak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krewlak/gifts).

> A somewhat angsty, probably toxic Gladsythe depiction. Now gifted to Krewlak, from one Gladys to another. 
> 
> But, here we go.  
Gladys and FP through the years...

_ **Truth or Dare** _

* * *

Summer vacation was supposed to be fun, but her Dad had too many club commitments and he promised that the end of Fifth Grade wasn’t an important one anyway, he’d make it up next year. But Gladys Swan always knew that when Momma cried silently while washing the dishes, Dad was going to be away for a while. The Southside was always a little more sombre than the rest of Riverdale, that, she learnt quickly. 

There was a train track that ran through Southside. It had a deeper meaning to all that surrounded it. The saying was that the sun sets first on Southside and maybe that was true, but what happened to those south of Southside? Daddy raised her to know that those on the northern end of Southside were Serpents, and those in the deep belly of the beast were Ghoulies, his pride shone brightly when it came to his precious Ghoulies.

They lived on the edge of it, left side of the train tracks. Where it was overgrown and the thick, menacing fog settled there - it always felt a little colder. People seemed to have sharpened teeth and grew claws, that’s how it felt on this side of the tracks.

On the opposite side, where if she stood on Momma’s bed and looked out the window, the Serpent King himself lived in the house with the kicked in doors and the broken pipes along the battered walls. And whenever they had to walk to the corner store, Momma would warn her not to look at FP senior, and she warned her with nails digging into her arms; _ “Don’t say those nasty things to FP, Gigi. He doesn’t have a Momma like you.” _ The years dragged on, and he never spoke about his Momma.

She wondered if she had left because her son was such a brat.

Summer vacation into Sixth Grade was sticky when the Southside kids couldn’t go to Sweetwater and they all hated their older siblings for ditching their asses. 

“Hey FP, truth or dare?!” Gladys pops a lollipop from between her lips, scruffy frayed Chuck Taylors that are ankle high and her denim jeans from Cassie, the cool big cousin in Toledo are barely three-quarter length. 

“Shush, Gigi,” Georgie begs his sister, “We don’t talk to Serpents,” he hisses, she finds the irony in it - sounding more snake like than the Serpent across the road - the remark crosses her mind. 

“It’s just FP,” she groans, yanking her arm out of her big brother’s grip. “Hey snake kid!” she calls again.

FP Jones with the jeans that were baggy and the shirt that looked like it belonged to his dad throws a ball in the air from the other side of the train tracks and pops a bubble with his gum between his teeth, almost like a snare. “What do you want, Gladys?” 

“Truth or dare?!” 

They stand on opposite sides of the train tracks, the divide between Serpents and Ghoulies, the obvious union of the area that was Southside, the physical reminder of the distance of the two gangs. 

“Truth,” he laughs, throwing his eyes in Alice Smith’s direction. 

“Is it true that I’d kick your ass?”

FP Jones spits on the ground before throwing the ball just shy of Gladys’ head. He doesn’t get the chance to answer when Gladys has him on his back and by the scruff of the neck. 

Georgie frowned at his baby sister, pulling her along by the scruff of the neck this time. “You can’t just pick fights, Gigi, that’s not how life works.” 

Gladys smiles, chewing a piece of strawberry gum she found on the ground where FP stayed lost in overgrown grass. “I guess it’s the truth now, huh?”

Alice Smith saved him from a black eye, but the split lip he had to wear. Lies spill from his mouth all summer, he tripped over, he jumped off a cliff, he crashed a car. The more elaborate, the more proud she was of herself. 

* * *

“Hey Darlin’!!” rings from the opposite side of the track. 

Alice lays in the overgrown grass next to the track, “Don’t respond to him, Gladys,” she mutters with her eyes closed, attempting to tan. 

Alice lies in shorts and sandals, spaghetti straps leave untanned marks on her shoulders that Gladys pretends she can’t see when she’s asked. Gladys takes her friend’s advice. “Out of sight, out of mind, I can do this.”

“You can.”

“Hey Darlin’!!!” calls again. 

“I can’t fucking do this, Al,” Gladys groans. 

Gladys drops the notebook she was reading her own scribble from and tucks her hair behind her ears, sitting up from the grass, she shoots a glare across the train tracks. 

Alice doesn’t bother opening her eyes. “I’m not separating another fight between you and FP.”

“Don’t act like it’s a full time job.”

“It _is_ a full time job,” Alice complains. “He annoys you, you kick his ass.”

“Circle of life,” Gladys shrugs.

FP’s snake duties aside, there were several things Gladys hated about FP. He was smug, arrogant, entitled, he was always chosen first for sport which means his ego was bigger than Ben Hur, and he thought he was funny. 

Which was crazy, because funny, he was _not_. 

“Hey Darlin’!” he calls again, this time, a laugh escaping from his sidekicks. 

“What do you want FP?!” she yells back, hands flying in the air and almost tangling herself in her jumper. 

He stands across from him, looking up into his eyes dark brown and menacing. The way his chest rises and falls with his chuckle that keeps breaking between tones irritates her so she places her hands on her hips the same way momma does when she’s annoyed. “Truth or dare?” 

“Dare!” she shouts back. 

He has a toothpick in his mouth, because that was his _thing_ now that he was a Freshman and his friend Fred Andrews could swing a bat. His hair slicked back because that’s how they wear on the Northside. He chuckles to himself, eyes watching his shoes in the grass. “I dare you to come and give me a hug.”

Gladys watches her best friend beside her, this time, Alice ditches the make-shift sun reflector made of cardboard wrapped in tinfoil, something she had learnt from Tina Topaz, the cool mom on Southside who had colours in her hair and wore printed dresses that reminded her of Stevie Nicks. Alice sits up, eyes darting from Gladys to FP. 

Gladys couldn’t back down from a dare, but she couldn’t hurt her best friend like that. The way Alice’s over glossed lips pursed told Gladys she wasn’t happy. 

“Fuck this,” she mumbles as she trudges from the grass patch to the train tracks, feet landing on the wooden planks in between. FP Jones’s smile is crooked on the right side, and the kink of his nose is obvious when she’s staring up at him. “You won’t catch me getting out of a dare, FP,” she snaps, flinging her arms around his neck. 

She pulls away and studies his smug smirk, “Ah, Darlin’, not that bad, am I?”

She stomps on his foot, “That’s what you get for trying to piss off Allie.” 

“I told you it was a bad idea, FP,” Fred says, chasing after Gladys.

“Yeah, but Marty said it was a good one,” he shrugs back. Marty remains silent, but Gladys knows he’s gutless.

Alice’s smile shows Gladys she forgives her, that night, they’ll scribble his name into her notebook alongside Alice’s. 

* * *

“The great divide. I hate that this isn’t metaphorical, we are literally standing on the wrong sides of the track,” Gladys sighs through a breath of smoke. 

She closes her eyes as she tilts her head to the sky, letting cool air brush over her skin; neck, chest, arms spread as if she could fly. Her docs balance unsteadily on the rail tracks, toes dipping, heels slipping on the metal. 

“It’s not that deep, Glad. This isn’t one of your poems you write.”

Alice stands opposite her, her own Marlboro she promised she’d pay Gladys back lazily bobs in the right corner of her mouth, Gladys makes a light comment about her sheer pink skirt her best friend wears when she opens her eyes and was it possible that the blonde could become blonder? “There’s a change in you, Al.”

“Well it is Sophomore year…”

“No, there’s something different.” 

Alice’s blush tells Gladys all of her secrets without her having to mutter a single word. “I’m still the same old me…”

Gladys stops herself from rolling her eyes, flicking her ash in between them - the middle of the train tracks, the great divide. “I can see your house from here, and FP’s,” she announces, flicking her cigarette to the other side of the tracks. The side closest to Riverdale. The difference between Serpents and Ghoulies. 

The difference between her Ghoulies life and Alice’s Serpent.

“FP…” Alice trails off and Gladys leaves her post, right there closest to Greendale’s border and Alice’s side of the tracks.

Gladys reaches up to Alice’s neck, pulling her into a head lock and messing her hair - that sweet girl blonde, a far cry different to her usual dirty blonde. “Fuck FP,” she says, earning a laugh from her best friend.

“That’s the problem, Glad.”

“Ugh!” Gladys spits, “Gross.”

Alice laughs again, a nervous ring through it, Gladys knows. 

Her intuition was half the reason she hates herself. 

Gladys pulls out her notebook, something pretty Fred Andrews bought her for her sixteenth because no one else got her anything, the best was Alice’s ability to hustle a few dollars to get her a chocolate shake and packet of Camels. She scrawls on it with the blunt pencil behind her ear.

“I better go,” Alice says, pulling her Serpents jacket over her shoulders. “If my dad…” Alice’s jaw tenses slightly, pausing.

“If your dad…” Gladys replies thickly, “then my dad would…” she pauses the same way Alice does. “kick his ass,” she finishes. 

“That’s what I’m scared of, we don’t need a Ghoulies, Serpents war.”

“Not again, you mean?”

“Exactly,” Alice sighs.

“Fine,” Gladys adds, hands on her hips. “I’ll beat his ass myself.”

Alice turns around, middle finger in the air as she walks back to her side of the tracks. “I know!” she yells. “That’s what I’m scared of!” she stops, spinning on her feet. “Who was the poem about?”

“Which?” Gladys asks, trying to shove the notebook down her bra but Alice is too quick, running and snatching it out of her shirt. 

“Blonder hair, pretty pink, deeper blue, running away soon… bitch, you wrote a poem about me.”

Gladys snatches it back, hovering the book above her open Zippo flame. “I’ll burn them all if you talk about them ever again.”

“You’re a talented writer, you should do more with these poems!”

“Before you start saying stuff we’re both going to regret, I’ll have you know that it was actually about Kurt Cobain so you’re completely wrong.” 

Alice rolls her eyes, receiving a smile in return from Gladys. “See you tomorrow, okay? No more poems about Kurt…”

Gladys turns too, heading back to her side. “Better Kurt than your ass.”

She walks back towards her house, if the space was smaller and the tracks removed, there would be no divide between Alice and Gladys, no midnight cigarettes, no skulls on one and snakes on the other, no their side and hers.

Where the Ghoulies howl, where the winds blow. Where Gladys was supposed to be home forty minutes ago. 

* * *

Alice borrows her eyeliner during first period and slips it back to her without Mr Marshall noticing, he scratches the board with chalk and Gladys scratches on the notebook she got from Georgie when he went to New York on vacation, she hates it when her brother leaves, but she loves it when he comes home with things for her. Trinkets remind her that at least someone sees her as a normal sixteen year old. 

She writes words in pretty cursive, sometimes it hides that the words end up an ugly reminder of what she feels. Alice peeps over and smiles, she’s the only one who cares that Gladys can string together a few words and make them seem like they’re meant to be together.

It’s like clockwork when FP to her right side leans in and asks; “Truth or dare?” 

To which she replies; “How many years will we play this stupid game for?” 

“You started it.”

“When we were _ten_.” Her black sharpie coloured in nails smudge on her assignment, “Truth.”

“Do you wish you lived on the Northside?”

The truth was that Georgie’s involvement with drugs was scaring her, the Ghoulies were hasher, more brazen than ever before. Momma’s tears were more frequent and sometimes, the look in Dad’s eyes scared her when it came to the gang. Fred always came to school with a packed lunch and the Blossoms seemed like the sort who stoked their fires with wads of cash. Elm street was so tidy and in the winter, it was pretty. She’d seen it once, on bikes with FP and Alice in each side, Fred’s mom was so kind and she made the best waffles she’d ever tried.

“No, FP,” she lies. “I wouldn’t change where I come from if my life depended on it.” 

Alice hears the lie loud and clear and smiles at Gladys, patting Gladys’ black nails with her own neon pink ones. 

FP shrugs, leaning back in his chair and kicking Marty’s in front of him. “I do,” he replies. 

FP was always the one who told the truth. 

* * *

She writes hurriedly in her notebook, a new one, from Alice. Fancy and pink, the entire thing is ugly and she hates it - she loves that Alice bought it with her new money. But, she still hates it. 

“Chocolate shake is your favourite.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. She was almost tempted to buy a new flavour, just to spite him. He wears his Serpents kutte with a pride she hadn’t seen before. He slides into the booth, sitting across from her, moving her books out of the way that she scowls at, trying to gather them into a pile.

“I’ve only known you twelve years, FP,” she says, shutting her notebook and putting it under her shake for safe measure. 

“That’s my point, I’ve known you twelve years, Swan, and all I know is that you like chocolate shakes, which is cool, it’s my favourite too.” 

“I think I’ve changed favourites.” 

FP throws his head back, rubbing his face with his palm. “You’re insufferable sometimes, you know that?”

Gladys smiles, raising her glass to him, “Thank you.”

He spots the opinel knife, folded and pretty next to her stack of books, his fingers dance across the booth’s table towards it, but she snatches it before him. “You have a knife?”

Gladys gives him an ominous look on purpose, just to make him shift a little in his seat. “Georgie bought it for me,” she says with a smile and a tone that unsettles him. 

“Your brother bought you a knife?”

She grabs the smooth wooden handle, pops it open, shiny blade shining pink under lights. “Yeah.”

“Cool,” he says, admiring it with confusion evident on his face. FP leans forward on the table. “It’s midnight, Gladys. Do you need me to take you home?”

“I have a knife.”

“I know, but you shouldn’t have to use it tonight.”

The softness of his tone is sickening, she rolls her eyes and leans in closer to him. “Are you trying to flirt with me?”

He quickly leans back, flicking up the collar of his jacket. “God forbid anyone actually try and do something nice for you.”

“Didn’t Mommy ever teach you not to trust anyone?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. But the words spill before she can stop them and the look on his face tells her she’s struck the wrong chord. 

“No.”

“Shit. I’m sorry kid,” she says, reaching out for his hand. Her hand lands on his and he doesn’t move it. 

They lock eyes and she pulls away. But he laughs gently. “Well damn, I think we just had a moment.” 

She groans. “Unfortunately, yes.” 

“Truth or dare?” he asks, jutting his head. 

Gladys rolls her eyes, scoffing before pulling out her notebook and playing with the corners of the pages. “Not this shit.”

“It’s not _ shit _, Darlin’. It’s our _thing_.” 

“We’re not kids anymore, it’s Junior Year.”

“Isn’t that more reason to keep doing it? Nostalgia.”

“Oh you know some fancy words there Mr Jones.” 

He shrugs his shoulders and crosses his arms. “Not just a pretty face and shit.” 

“Dare,” she says with a loud sip of her shake, lips pursed against the straw. 

“Show me what’s in that notebook.” 

She clings onto it until her knuckles turn white, her heart races, her head pounds, her body tenses. She hates this fucking game. “Fuck you,” she moans, knowing that he knows she can’t back down from a dare. 

His smugness is written all over his face. “Come on, Darlin’, it’s all part of the game.” 

She tries not to let it look too obvious that her hand is shaking, she would never give him the satisfaction, but she flicks to a page that doesn’t hurt as much - or embarrass her as much. “This page and this one only.” 

It’s something pretty, about the feeling of home, about dark corners of Southside, fading light on cold nights, eerie air during fall, simple, not too deep, nothing too personal. It takes him longer than she likes for him to read it but his face remains blank and she almost wants to slap something on it. 

“Gladys,” he says slowly, hating her name in his mouth. “I never knew you could write!”

“We went to the same school, dumbass. You mean to tell me you _can’t_?”

He swats her hand lightly with her notebook before giving it back. “You know what I mean. It was good. Really good. I mean, I imagine, I don’t really know anything about that shit.” 

She comes back with a quick. “Truth or dare?” changing the subject. 

“Truth.”

“Just how much information are you trying to get on me?” 

FP’s face lights up, tongue tracing along the front of his teeth. “Everything.”

She sniggers. “A Serpent can’t know that much about a Ghoulie, kid. We’re enemies.” 

“I’m not trying to get to know a _Ghoulie_, I’m trying to get to know Gladys Swan as more than my annoying as all hell neighbour.” 

“People can use this sort of information against you, you know?”

“What am I going to do?” he teases. “Steal your identity?”

Gladys looks at FP in the eye, his scar on his upper lip isn’t as red as it used to be and his hand runs through his hair, just as it always does. Chewing on his gum, he pops it. “Dirty habit,” she announces, changing the subject.

“I can think of worse,” he mumbles.

“Who are you?” she laughs, a snicker escaping. “Willy Wonka?”

“What?” he asks again.

Gladys puts her feet up on the chair, raising her knees to rest her chin on as she gets back to flicking through the pages of her notebook, “Good bye, Forsythe.”

“No, you have to tell me, why are you always like that?” He presses. “You know… standoffish. 

“You let people in, that’s when they start fucking with your mind,” she says with a wink. 

FP chuckles. “You gotta let people in sometimes.”

“I’m not taking advice from you, FP.”

He knocks on the table two times before jutting his chin, “Hey Glad, give me a cigarette and I’ll get outta your hair.”

“Fine,” she says defeated, not really wanting to walk home alone. “I’ll come.”

“Come as you are, as you were -“

She cuts him off. “Alice is the Nirvana fan, not me.”

“If you’re not a Nirvana fan, what are you?”

“Soundgarden. Add that to the list of things you know about me.”

FP nods. “I’ll make sure to remember that, Swan.”

“I’ll come, but you finally have to stop calling me by my surname.”

FP holds out his hand, she takes it and shakes. “Why? It’s like Swan from The Warriors. It’s a classic.”

“Coming from a guy who didn’t get a Willy Wonka reference… Don’t you have Alice to annoy?” 

He doesn’t answer, but he runs his fingers through his hair and closes his eyes. “if I had to choose between annoying Alice or annoying you, I’d choose you.”

She feels sorry for him. Hal Cooper stole all Alice’s time and her heart too, there was no amount of lies Gladys could tell FP to change that. 

“Come on, kid. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

She lets him walk her home and she listens to him carry on about how much he especially doesn’t like Alice Smith. 

* * *

Gladys watches herself in the mirror. She wears Led Zep on her, she pulls Georgie’s Ghoulies kutte over the top. Dad had made an offhand comment now she has to step up, she can hear Momma’s crying from downstairs. She never thought much about death, but now that he’s gone, that's all she can think about.

She walks outside to the tracks and she wishes that Alice was there, but Alice would never go back to her dad, not even Georgie’s death was going to change that. To Gladys, sixteen feels so old. But Georgie’s twenty-one was so young. It was almost poetic, but she hated poems. 

She kicks rocks along the tracks, losing them in the dark of the night but her attention is caught when she hears rustling in the dark, someone walking through the dew. “The Serpents send their condolences. To lose two members of your gang must be hard on your father.” She laughs humorlessly at the formality of it. She’d pay good money to know how long he had been reciting that line. 

“I lost my brother and his best friend, we didn’t just lose two members.”

FP clears his throat and shoves his hands in his pocket. “I - I ah, I know. We just…” he stops for a moment. “We just don’t talk about things like that you know. _ You _ don’t talk about things like that.” 

She pulls out a cigarette and lights it with a match, striking it four times, snapping it but it dangles just long enough before dropping for her to get the Marlboro going. “Thanks.”

"No worries.”

“Truth or dare?” she asks. 

“What?” he asks, shock evident in the moonlight. 

“Truth or dare?” she repeats, looking up at him. 

His eyes are filled with sorrow that she hadn’t been able to carry herself. His shoulders hunch, his awkward step from foot to foot tells her that maybe, he wanted to dive a little deeper into her tonight. “Truth.” 

“Did your mom die?”

He opens and closes his mouth before biting on the right side of his lip and nodding. “Yeah.”

“So you know how much this hurts?”

He holds out his hand to her, distance diminishing, the same distance she had tried to keep for so long. She takes his hand and he pulls her in. There’s black smears of eyeliner on his shirt.

“I really thought Alice might have been here…” she whispers, words barely escaping her.

FP sighs, “yeah, I thought she might have been here too.”

“It sucks.”

“That’s probably the deepest I’ve ever heard you get, Darlin’” his chuckle vibrates through his chest into hers. “It’s weird when you actually look at the people who’ve got your back.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Like me and you.”

* * *

There are aspects of her life that are legit, there are lines that are blurred. Her father reminds her of that every time he hands her powders prepacked for her all sealed with that cute little sticker of a red skull as a personal touch.

Snow is that bad omen she hates, snowy prepacked powders have to have a cute little nickname to match those cute little skull stickers. It makes her feel not as bad. 

It makes her feel like she’s not selling drugs to help her family, but her brother didn’t die for nothing. Georgie just wanted to leave Riverdale for more money. 

He didn’t die for nothing.

Malachai tried his hardest to protect Georgie, and he didn’t deserve to die either, but she never speaks about him, not in front of his father Marcus or his brother, Zeke. The Martinez’s didn’t speak about their feelings, and if she opened that can of worms, Zeke would get into a whiskey induced spiel about how he’d name his first born son after his brother. Malachai Junior, he gushes already. 

Gladys couldn’t imagine bringing a child into this fucked up world. Dad reminds her that nothing is safer than Riverdale. Not when you’re part of a big family that protects you.

Martinez and Swan fixed a lot of cars, it bred a lot of Ghoulies and those cute little prepacked baggies with the skull on them puts food on her table. MS are the mechanics that were legit. It was the smoke and mirrors. It was the real reason she wore that skull on her back. It was the mask that covered the Ghoulies.

“We need to eat, Gigi,” Momma reminds her from under the hood of a 65 Impala. Gladys hands over a crescent and the weight of that cute little bag is heavy in her breast pocket. Momma gives her a kiss on the cheek, smudged oil on her weathered face. 

“I know,” Gladys says with a smile so fake, it feels like it’s going to crack.

She takes a fleeting look over the Impala, fresh paint, all leather interior. 

She walks away from it.

Ghoulies howl in the night, the wind blows in the dark. And Gladys Swan can’t wait to get out of this world.

* * *

They lie on the floor of her house, the carpet is threadbare and Momma had big plans about replacing it, but for some reason, Dad needed the money to do with the Ghoulies because that’s just what the leader does, he raised his babies to know that. So Momma made do with a new rug and it was soft and plush, nothing like Gladys had ever known. 

The house was empty, the gang took Dad to Toledo so Momma went too and Dad hated that Gladys was friends with a Serpent, but Momma knew things about FP Senior that swayed Dad’s opinion on FP Junior. He had hand prints on his arms and sometimes his eyes were blackened, but she didn’t care to know what happens at the Serpents. 

“See, you can be nice sometimes, Darlin’,” he says, blowing the smoke of a blunt he had awkwardly rolled. “Nice rug.”

She elbows him in the ribs, and he flinches as he rolls onto his side. “I hate it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the embodiment of what’s wrong in this house.” She wants to tell him just how much she hates this place, she hates her parents. If it wasn’t for them, her brother would be here. But she doesn’t open up, not at all. Not ever.

“Right.”

They lay in silence, only the sound of his inexperienced cough echoing through the room. FP wasn’t many words when it was just them, but that’s how she liked it. The more people spoke, the more she knew and she didn’t care to know anything about anyone either. The more you know, the more you care. And she couldn’t care about anyone, not in this world. Not when it’s like this. But she enjoys his silence and she enjoys the company sometimes. Just knowing that someone won’t always leave. “Truth or dare?” she asks. 

“Truth,” he says, holding his breath. 

“Do you miss Alice?”

FP’s silence is thick this time, hanging and swaying above them in the cold room. The sun sets and she watches the light shift along the wall as she waits for him to answer. “I do,” he replies shortly. “Do you?”

Alice was light coloured clothing these days, her hair was shorter than usual, her lips light pink and she misses when they were kids and there was no emphasis on the North and South sides. Now all she talks about is never coming home, not to her house across the tracks, not to the Serpents. She’s so much closer to Elm Street now that she’s with Hal Cooper, the guy with the sharp jaw and the brushed hair. “No,” she says, a laugh escaping her, covering her tracks. 

She rolls her head to look at FP and the expression he wears tells her that he knows she’s lying. “She was your best friend, Glad.”

“Yeah, well, she’s the girl _you’re_ in love with.” 

“She _was_,” he admits, a nervous hand running through his hair. “Now I don’t know her at all.” 

Questions sit on the tip of her tongue, but she swallows them. She couldn’t know too much, she already lost one friend. 

What’s the point in making another?

“Do you ever wish we weren’t kids from a gang?”

There were a lot of things she wished, that Momma and Dad didn’t force Georgie into things he didn’t want to do, that maybe they cared a little more about what she was interested in, hell, even the fucking carpet gets under her skin when she thinks about it late at night. Just another thing they didn’t have. “Wishes are for the romantics, Forsythe.”

“Are you saying I’m romantic?” his eyes glaze over with that arrogance she has to slap out of him sometimes.

Gladys groans. “I fucking hate you sometimes.” 

“You…” FP starts quietly. “You won’t change, right? Promise me.” There was a seriousness in his tone, a desperation she could pinpoint. Begging. 

Her elbow meets his rib again. “Don’t start this shit, FP,” she warns. “I’m not your therapist nor your friend.”

“Promise me!” he moans. “Please?”

She sighs. “Fine.”

“Say it.”

“I _promise_.”

His smile lights up the cold house. “Pinky promise?”

She throws a pillow at his head.

* * *

“Come on kid,” she says, slinging his arm across her shoulders.

“I’m not any better than he is,” he slurs. He wears bourbon as a perfume, he wears it on his shirt, he wears the bottle in his hand and all over his mouth. FP flexes a split right hand and he grimaces at the pain. “My dad’s an asshole and I’m not any better.”

“I mean, you’re an asshole, but you’re not your dad.”

“I’m trying.”

“You’re doing good, kid,” she says through grunt, trying to pull his form through the grass. “We all get a little too drunk to handle.”

“You’re being nice,” he whispers with a smile. 

Gladys groans, “Eh, I’m not one to argue with a drunk person.”

“I’m a fucking idiot.”

“That you are,” Gladys announces. “And I gotta say, it takes a set of balls to call a Ghoulie to come and bail your ass out of the Whyte Wyrm, you owe me, Jones.”

He chuckles deep from his belly. “Only you would care more about the fact you had to come and get me out of there than the fact that I’m a fucking idiot.” 

“I already know you’re an idiot, FP. I wasn’t going to let your ass get beat over some girl.”

“Not _some_ girl, Darlin’.”

They make it to his front door step, he trips over every single step and she leaves him lying on the porch. “It always is Alice,” she laughs. “I don’t blame anyone who gets their ass beat over Alice.”

FP rolls to his side, dropping his bottle at the same time. “It was _you_.”

“I don’t need anyone to stick up for me.”

“I’m going.”

“You’re not going anywhere, kid, you’re drunk.”

"I’m going because of Alice.”

Gladys rolls her eyes. “When will you ever be over Alice?”

“Just… when I go, you’ll be safe, right?”

She doesn’t ask any questions, no questions means no lies. She didn’t care to know why FP Jones got his ass beat over here, that was on him. But her mind flickers on where he’s going. “I’ve got a knife.”

He laughs, closing his eyes. “That you do.”

* * *

“Why did you act like you didn’t know me today?” he hisses in her ear as she hurries down the stairs of Pop’s, takeaway cup in her hand, bag of fries in the other. 

What was she going to tell him? That the fact that they were spending more time together scared her? That Mary told her that he had spoken about her more than once over the weekend when he crashed at Fred’s? Or that the longer he goes without asking for advice about Alice and he spends more time trying to get information about herself out of her makes her feel uneasy. 

Yeah, she’d rather run away with the bag of french fries. 

“Gladys!” he says, managing to get a hold of her arm and stopping her. “Hey, nice shirt.” 

She looks down at the Pearl Jam shirt Mary had bought her on her recent trip to Seattle. “Yeah, it does the trick.”

“You gonna tell me why you didn’t sit with us today?”

“Alice wasn’t there,” she says offhandedly.

FP scoffs, “_Alice_ isn’t coming back at _all_ this semester, Ms Collins told us so, so stop waiting for something that isn’t going to happen,” he throws his hands in the air. “Hell, the same could be said for _anything_ you do. Stop waiting for shit that isn’t going to happen!”

Gladys turns, her brand new Docs in bright red are already dirty, she pulls out her hands from her jeans, all acid washed and dirty with motor oil. “I’m sorry? Are you my mother?!”

FP pulls on his Letterman, the act itself makes Gladys roll her eyes, it almost screamed at her that he was trying to use that jacket as his armour. “Yeah, maybe I’m trying to be, someone has to at least care for you.”

“Ugh, shut up!”

“That’s all you can say?”

He stands in front of her, looking down his nose at her. But she doesn’t back down, not now, not ever, she straightens her back, juts out her chin, sneer creeping onto her face. “Maybe I just don’t want to hang out with an entitled prick!”

His laugh is humourless. “Oh that’s fucking rich!”

“What the hell does that mean?!” she snaps, digging in her heels.

“It _means_,” he replies slowly, “that I’ve never met a bitch in my life as difficult as you!”

She stamps her foot, fists tensing at her sides. “Maybe I’m so goddamn difficult because I have to put up with you!”

They pause for a moment. It’s thick and layered, she can smell the strawberry gum that he chews obnoxiously in front of her, from here, she notices just how tall he is and the smug crook of his lips with the scar on the right side, the dent in his nose and the thick lashes of his eyes. Fuck FP Jones, she thinks. His chest rises and falls at the same time hers does. And of course, he couldn’t even give her the satisfaction of _ breathing _ on her own, she knows. Just another way to piss her off. 

FP throws his hands in the air again. “Well fuck me, no ones forcing you to be here!”

“Well fuck _me_ if I haven’t been stuck with your ass for the past eternity!”

“Maybe that’s your problem, darlin’!” he sneers, “Maybe I should!”

The glare they gave each other was ice cold water over the moment. Before she has the chance to tell him she’d kill him, she flies forward, her mouth on his. Unsure if she just needed to be closer to him or shut him the hell up. 

FP groans, his hands finding their way to the edge of her crop, fingers scratching on the skin of the small of her back, his lips keeping up with the pace of hers. She breaks away, chests heaving and his belt buckle rubs against hers. 

Gladys bites her lip, screws up her face. Fights with herself internally because this was never supposed to happen and the smile that toys with her that he gives her just annoys her even further. Before she can argue with him, he captures her lips again. “You,” he starts with a kiss on her jawline, “drive me,” another on her neck, “fucking crazy,” he tastes her collarbone.

Her breath catches when his teeth drag along the sensitive skin of her neck. Her hands snake to her sides, finding his wrists, twisting them back in front of him in a way that made his knees buckle. “And you’re an asshole.”

She walks away with a sway in her hips, a lick of her lips and her Ghoulies jacket sitting on her shoulders. “You’re killing me, Gladys!”

She puts up her middle finger in the air. “That’s the point, kid!” 

* * *

She gets a motorcycle before he does and he checks it out at the front of his house while his dad’s gone. “Sexy, I like it.” 

“It’s not bad, a nice ride.” 

“Not the bike, Gladys. You.”

She rolls her eyes, shoving him with sharp nails against his chest. "In your dreams."

"Yeah, you're right. A shit load in my dreams."

“Try that shit one more time, I dare you.” 

He slaps a hand over his heart. “How many times are you going to shut me down?”

“As many times as it takes, your pick up lines are fucking shit.” 

He turns around to put her helmet back on her bike and that snake that shines in the summer sun almost slithers on his back, it makes the weight of the skull on hers feel all that more heavier. She snickers to herself, some kind of Westside story bullshit. 

“Eh, I’ll work on it,” he shrugs, stamping out a cigarette he’d stolen from her pocket. “I’ll be the one to break ya.”

She exhales the last of her cigarette and shoves it into FP Senior’s pride and joy - a stupid pot plant. And just as she spins out of FP’s fingers in her belt loop holes and his breath of her neck, she gets him against the wall of his front porch, shoving his chest before stepping away. “I don’t think so.”

FP is a cocky kick in the air with a toothpick in his mouth and that Serpents jacket is his goddamn crown. “Oh yeah? And why’s that?” 

Gladys shrugs. “You’re still in love with Alice, FP.”

There’s something that hurts her chest when she voices her thoughts, and there’s something in the way FP’s eyes darken and his jaw tenses when he tells her that’s not true. 

Something in her feels like the words out of her mouth were like poison, and something in her feels like maybe he’s telling the truth.

* * *

The day came, and just as Gladys had expected, like some fucking love story, it rained. 

He had shaved, a fresh start he had insisted. It made him look younger. He was so lucky to run away. 

Fred couldn’t even summons the gut to come. No one had seen Alice. The people who _did_ say goodbye said it on his front porch while his dad was passed out inside. Gladys’ eyes prickled the whole way to the bus station. 

She never asked if he was coming back, she didn’t want to know. She promised him letters and phone calls and all sorts of different things when he begged her. Whether she’d keep those was a different story or so she wrote in her notebook, leather, his whole Summer’s savings from drug runs to Greendale. She loved it and she told him that. One thing that wasn’t a lie. 

Her ear buries itself on top of his heart and it races in time with hers. So pretty and soulful, so disappointing. How she manages to feel something, she doesn’t know. But it’s there buried deep in her stomach. Through the ache in her body. 

“I don’t want you to go.”

“Admit it,” he says with a smirk. “You love me.”

FP watches Gladys sideways and moves his hand to behind her neck, long fingers placing themselves one by one on her skin. He waits for her to answer but he realises that this time, she's not going to. Gladys closes her eyes and her fists hit FP in the chest, one by one, each strike short, sharp and precise as she hits him. He lets every hit sting him like sharp whips, like rain on a roof. 

Like a snake striking its prey. 

She lets him go when he brushes his lips on hers and she watches him walk away, bag over his shoulder. “Hey Gladys,” he calls from the bus. She stands at the stop clutching onto the Serpents jacket that smells like stale beer and cheap deodorant. “Truth or _truth_?” he asks, not giving her the option.

She rolls her eyes, chucking her cigarette on the ground and stomping on it. “Truth.” 

“Are you going to miss me?”

She pauses, throat closing in, biting her lip. Was she going to miss him? The only person left on the Southside worth talking to? The only person who battles her snark and carries on talking to her as if she didn’t just threaten his life? The only one who stays up late with her when no one else was around? The only Serpent who didn’t see her as a Ghoulie? 

Was she going to miss the only person she’d opened up to?

The bus starts rolling and his impatience could be seen even as he was slowly departing. She smiles to herself, knowing he was waiting on her answer. 

“No fucking way,” she yells out to him. 

FP clutches at his heart. “That really fucking sucks to hear.” 

Just another lie she’s told him to add to the list. 

She doesn’t cry, not for him. Or the fact that he fucking left when he shouldn’t have. 

She cries silently and into that Southside Serpents jacket he leaves behind because she hates the fact that she was left standing with the feelings she doesn’t want to own. 

She gets on her bike, revs it up. On her way towards Elm Street to see if Alice wanted to burn something and she just happened to have a jacket that looked so pretty up in flames. 

She stays at her home in Riverdale, with that skull on her back. Where the Ghoulies howl, where the winds blow. Where for the first time in forever, she’s all alone. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. The Serpent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knows people talk about sparks flying, thunder crashing, heart beating out of your chest kinda shit; Alice used to always talk about searching for the feeling and Gladys would put in to poetry that was definitely not written for Alice.  
He didn’t know if sparks were flying or if thunder was crashing but his heart was both racing and steady at the same time. And the way she whispers; “Don’t ever leave this place again or I’ll fucking hunt you down and kill you myself,” makes him feel at home. And there was a whole lot of truth to that statement.

_ **The Serpent** _

* * *

FP couldn’t remember the last time he went to the Twilight Drive-In, but somewhere in him, he really thought it might have changed while he was gone. 

His Serpents kutte earns glares from the patrons, there was something comforting about the fact that even after three years gone, it still fits like a glove. Alice had dropped it off to his dad, some shit story about someone trying to set it on fire, she saved it. She was just in the neighbourhood (funny, because she swore black and blue she’d never go back to Southside) she dropped it off to FP Senior. He kept it in a trash bag until his son came home. 

Why the fuck he came home, FP doesn’t know. 

The Terminator is loud and jarring as he walks up the driveway into the Drive-In. Some of the information his dad gave him was that the Swans didn’t live in Southside anymore, they left for Toledo and they took their weird daughter with them and thank God, because she was a right bitch. His Dad’s words hit FP; FP swung a hit that left a hole in the wall and his dad left him on his ass with his trashbag full of sentimental shit that contributed nothing. He carried that bag down the road, using all the money he had on a trailer at Sunnyside. 

Mary held more information when she sat awkwardly in the Whyte Wyrm with the ring he’d recognise anywhere as Mrs A’s on her left hand. Gladys Swan never left to Toledo, she ran the Drive-In and she ran a little _ more _ than that. His eyes lit up, so did Fred’s. Finally, someone that could stand up to Gladys, because all she ever used Fred for was his mom’s waffle recipe. 

Everything about Riverdale felt exactly the same as it did when he left. He felt old, but twenty-one hadn’t even kicked in properly. Fred and Mary had settled into it just fine, they were already talking about a house, kids, and FP had to laugh when they told him that Alice and Hal were already expecting. 

She got that life she was looking for, he was happy about it. She deserved everything she ever wanted.

The eyes that followed the snake on his back continue as he strolled past lines for popcorn and kids kicking stones across the lot. “You better stop kicking those rocks before I throw them at you!” comes from the counter. “I’ve got great aim!”

He sees her standing there, the dissatisfied look still staunch on her face, the quirky smile that she wears when she gets a rise out of someone. She still wears the band t-shirts that Mary gets her whenever she’s away, the leather jacket way too big for her shoulders that probably smells like stale cigarettes and strawberry gum, the same shit he used to give her everytime she started complaining. 

He works through the feelings in his chest, because she made promises but shit, she was fucking terrible at keeping them and her few phone calls every couple of months that ended up with her slamming the phone down in his ear were just not enough. Surface deep conversations that never explained where she was or what she was doing. Or with whom. She’d only ever talk about the good ole days and how she was a drop out. Because school was for dreamers and that dream was finally being opened on Southside for all those little snotty nosed brats who were born of Ghoulies and Snakes. The phone calls ended one year in, and so did the letters written for Chris Cornell that she’d send to his base that felt like they were more for him than any frontman of a grunge band. 

He runs his tongue around the toothpick, a nervous tick he had inherited from his father because even under the flashing lights from the screen her sharp nose and full lips had him wanting to fall to his knees. 

He doesn’t even make it to the counter when she spots him. At first, she drops popcorn. Her mouth drops too. 

She’s flinging herself in one movement over the counter, almost taking out a kid and his mom. 

He can’t help it. His heart beats so fucking hard, it’s almost out of his chest and his arms are open to recieve her. But after a stumble only a metre away from him with her feet landing one on top of the other, and her footing finding itself, she’s not in his arms straight away. 

It’s a sharp jab in his chest, followed by another, and then both at the same time. “You can’t just turn up here without saying anything, fuck you, FP Jones!” she spits. 

But her smile, her quivering voice, her wet, shaky lower lids and the way her lip drops before she inhales sharply tells him she’s not so mad. 

She throws herself into his arms, he spins her around. “Hey there, Darlin’,” he smiles in her hair. “You dropped off the edge of the fucking world.”

“I hate you for this, kid,” she whispers against his neck. “Welcome back to the cesspit.”

There’s a group of Ghoulies who watch every step she makes, and every one he takes alongside hers. “Your groupies or something?” he asks, noticing the smile she wears a little more than she used to, and the way her hand falls on his wrists when she’s pulling him closer. 

“My boys like to keep an eye on things, now that I’m in charge.”

Gladys’ eyes hold more than she’d ever speak, FP learnt to read them a long time ago, the swell of her breasts covered in lace was new but the way she always chews on the corner of her lip was something he knew all too well. She was waiting for his reaction, because she knows just as well as he does that all she ever wanted was to leave Riverdale, and the Ghoulies in the shadows were like chains, keeping her there. “In charge, huh Darlin’?” he laughs. “Well, it’s just like you to be in charge.” 

“I’m glad you still recognise that I’m the boss around here.” Her eyes darken when her attention is dragged to the ground, an interest in her feet. “Who would have thought you’d come back to be the King of the Serpents and I’m the Queenpin of the Ghoulies, huh?” her laugh is quiet and empty as she pulls down her skirt a little down her thighs. 

FP snickers, rolling his eyes. “No one calls me that,” he groans. 

“Oh really?” she asks, throwing her head back. “Quite an impressive title if you ask me, and it’s travelling the streets, I assumed everyone was talking about your old man being back in but it’s you as I live and breathe…”

“You sound like Fred.” FP ignores the hurried words about Southside, her hands fly in the air and every second word is something sharp. He slings his arm over her shoulder as she starts heading back towards the counter. “Truth or dare?” he asks. 

Gladys’ smile grows and she toys with the chain around her neck. “Not this shit again.”

“Come on, Glad! We have to!” he insists, barely dragging his eyes from her lips. 

“Dare,” she says, kicking stones. 

“I dare you to tell me the truth about whether or not you missed me.”

“That’s cheating,” she says quietly.

The air is thick, and for a moment, he forgets they’re at the drive in until he puts his hand on the counter and it’s in sticky, melted ice cream and a line grows in front of one of her Ghoulies. Her sigh is loud, she reaches out to his hands and holds them, closing her eyes for a moment. 

He knows people talk about sparks flying, thunder crashing, heart beating out of your chest kinda shit; Alice used to always talk about searching for the feeling and Gladys would put in to poetry that was definitely not written for Alice.

He didn’t know if sparks were flying or if thunder was crashing but his heart was both racing and steady at the same time. And the way she whispers; “Don’t ever leave this place again or I’ll fucking hunt you down and kill you myself,” makes him feel at home. And there was a whole lot of truth to that statement.

* * *

It’s the moments like these when FP forgets that he had even left Riverdale at all, and that the only person who was around anymore was Gladys Swan. His only reminder that maybe she was a little different to him was when she wore her leather jacket with the skull.

The more he thinks on it, the more he sees it as a reminder that they were exactly the same. 

She stubs out a cigarette in the ashtray, she takes of a loose flannel when summer heat creeps over her skin. She was sharp edges and words, but she was beautiful. 

The lighting in the trailer is shitty and flickering, but she speaks like she doesn’t notice the little problems that FP doesn’t have the money to fix. “I like this place, kid,” she says, looking around like she’d just walked into Thornhill. “Nothing a bit of TLC can’t fix.” 

FP sniggers, exhaling the last of the blunt given to him by Tall Boy. “Yeah?”

Gladys sighs. “I’m trying to be optimistic, please play along.” 

“Your optimism is working, keep going,” he urges. 

“Eh, I’ve got nothing left.” 

The train tracks that she always insisted seperated them didn’t exist anymore when she was in his trailer on his side of Southside. She didn’t talk about the Great Divide anymore. Just the common ground they shared - The Ghoulies and The Serpents. 

They sit side by side at the kitchen table given to him by the Topaz’s, Gladys even came over to help him paint it, but all they had was pink paint, so, pink it was. She’d complained that it was ugly and they should light it up in flames, he had told her it would only matter to her if she lived there. 

She insisted she was just fine living in the store room of the Drive-In. He didn’t argue with her, not that time. She’d already jabbed him too many times in the ribs to be comfortable. 

“I like spending time with you, Glad,” he says, looking her in the eye. 

At first, she smiles in return. Red lips smudged on white teeth and her eyes squint when she’s happy. But she purses those same red lips and slightly pulls away from him before patting his hand and replies dubiously; “Don’t make this all pretty and deep, FP.” 

He huffs, “Are you ever going to let anyone in?”

“Are we ever going to have a different conversation?”

He sits back in his chair, throwing his hands in the air. She irritated him to no end, of that, he was certain. But somehow, she kept him wanting a little more of her each time. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

He laughs, booming through the kitchen. “You set yourself up -”

“I just can’t be bothered doing whatever ridiculous dare you have ready for me.” 

He shrugs, “Fair enough. Okay,” he starts. “Be honest. Why don’t you get close to people?”

“You and I are close, aren’t we?”

The statement sits in the air, FP doesn’t know how to answer it, at times, he feels like she’s the only person in his zone, at others, he feels like Gladys Swan couldn’t be farther away even if she was sitting with him in the same trailer. She chews on the corner of her lip, he counteracts with running his hand through his hair, the question and statement keeps them both on edge. “We are.”

She stands up from the table, fumbling fingers on another cigarette. “I gotta go.”

“So you do have a heart,” he sniggers, no humour in the sound. Too much frustration, a hell of a lot of straight up annoyed. “You do feel something,” he pauses a beat. “And you don’t have to go.”

“I don’t feel anything.”

But FP sees her notebook half hanging out of her duffle and he knows enough about poetry and enough about Gladys Swan to know that all those scrawled words in it are only because she feels _ something _. 

He pulls her into his chest, he doesn’t care if she wants to strike back, push away, yell at him. Maybe she needs someone to just be there, maybe she hasn’t changed much from when they were fifteen at the train tracks. “Is this okay, Glad?” he asks after several heartbeats of her silence. 

She exhales and it quivers against him. “If I can’t let you in, then who the hell can I?”

He chuckles. “You don’t always have to be…” he searches for the right words. “So _ you _.”

FP hears a steadying breath escape her, her body tenses up. “Well this is me, Kid,” she says in a way that shakes him to his core. “And if you haven’t figured that out by now, then you don’t know me at -“

“I do know you, Gladys!” He spits back. “And I know you well and I know that you don’t want to be like this if only you just let someone -“

“Don’t say it!” She threatens.

“_ -in _!”

She huffs, hands on her hips. “You let someone in and they start this!”

FP rolls his eyes. “What are you so afraid of?!” he snaps with a break in his voice. “That you might actually fall in love with me?”

She pauses and the air thickens. Her thumb flicks back and forth over the Zippo lighter, clicking the lid. “I already did!” she says with a shout. Her voice lowers and her hands fly in the air. “You left, FP. And you didn’t even know how I felt when you left me here!”

When she does move away, her anger still shakes the walls of the trailer. She was obviously a person who couldn’t let go, she always held a grudge. Gladys Swan was going to kill him, he knew that back then, he knew it now. She was the broken girl who was hard to break. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says with a sniff of courage. 

“I may have left, Gladys. But you never let me in anyway.”

She walks out the door. “I was too scared to feel like this,” she mumbles. “Like fucking shit.”

They finally agreed on something. Because he feels like fucking shit too. 

But just as he rushes to the door to stop her, she’s turned around with her hands on his chest, pushing him back into the trailer. They barely make it to the room, and his heart feels like it’s beating out of his fucking throat. When she hurries him along with a; “Hurry up, I’m getting bored,” his fingers fumble with his own zipper and she lays on his bed with no sheets with heavy eyes and deep sighs.

There was a feeling FP always got when he was a little drunk, vision blurry, tingling lips, a smile that feels like it’s going to break his face and the background hum in his mind with warm cheeks. Deep down in the pit of it, the weightlessness he feels keeps him searching for more.

He was always a little disappointed when he wakes up the next morning with a headache he could only get rid of if he repeated the process.

Gladys rides him from on top with her nails around his neck and her back arched, she blurred his vision, bit his lips until they tingled, made his smile like it was going to fucking break him even when she tightened her grip, hummed his name into his mind and flushed his cheeks. Deep down in the pit of it, she gives him the feeling of weightlessness he’s been searching for.

Even if he wakes up tomorrow and she’s the fucking reason he has a headache, he’ll do what he does with the bourbon.

He’ll keep chasing that feeling forever.

When she puts her hands around his neck again, tightening with every movement with that self-satisfied grin on her face and darkened eyes, he almost loses his shit. The feeling of her nails on his thin skin and the way she slowly controls his very being and breath turns him on so much, he wants to get her against the wall with her arms locked up above her head and his name spilling from her mouth. But he lets her stay in control, because he was fucked if he made a move. Something in Gladys was all in control when she was on top - she was the reason why he was allowed to breath.

It was unceremoniously short, quick, but the feeling of his heart wedges between his rib cage and the tenderness of her mouth on his if only for a second proved that he wanted to do it again.

He lays with her in his arms for only a minute before she decides she’s actually really busy and she wasn’t at all interested in cuddling anyway. He tells her; “Man, I haven’t felt this way since -“

“Alice?” she concludes for him. Her lips stuff, her Ghoulies kutte straight over her bra, t-shirt tucked into the back of her jeans.

Instead of starting a war that he’ll never win, he lets her leave without an answer.

But he hasn’t felt this way since he kissed her for the last time three years ago, he means.

* * *

She hadn’t spoken to him in two weeks. It killed him from the inside out, so he found himself at the yard owned by the Ghoulies that she worked at. If she wanted to play games, he could play them harder. But he wouldn’t and he couldn’t because there was something about the only girl that understood him that not only annoyed him, but weakened him. And he hated that. 

Southside became darker, it was a foreshadowing if ever he saw one because throughout their childhood, she had always said things were a little darker on the Southside when the Serpents ran wild and the Ghoulies never rested. It wasn’t by accident that they seemed to be the only two people left in the dark, damp place. Her poems weren’t just poems. 

They were the motherfucking story of Riverdale.

MS Mechanics wasn’t his kind of digs, he may have earnt the title of Serpent King, whatever the fuck that meant, but he wasn’t dumb. He couldn’t just walk into the Ghoulie’s den. Yet, Gladys Swan made him do stupid things. Grovelling at her feet didn’t seem like his sort of thing, but three years seperated them, and two weeks of her radio silence was deafening.

He walks up slowly, eyes creeping on him in an instant. “I don’t think you should be here, Serpent,” a guy murmurs. “You’re a long way from home.” 

FP flicks his head, “Not here for any trouble.”

Three guys make their way to him, one speaks; “Why the hell are you here?”

“I’m here for Gladys.” 

“And what makes you think she wants to talk to you?” another chimes in. 

All three have darkened eyes, broad shoulders. None as tall as him, none with his _ gut _ , none with his _ desperation _. FP sniggers, spitting by their feet. “You go and ask her, since you work off her orders, go and tell her that I’m here to talk to her.” 

The three of them saunter away with a stagger in their steps and jaws sticking out. FP lights up a Camel and takes a drag before he spots her in a far corner, under the hood of something cherry red with a drop top. He whistles out; “Hey!” he calls. 

The hood shuts quicker than he’s ever seen before. 

She’s smudged in oil, grease on her face, matching cherry red lips that her tongue rolls over and it weakens his knees, his own shoulders straighten out when she stands before him, that opinel she’s had forever between her fingers and she drops a jack on the ground by his feet. “Hmmm?” 

“Hmmm?” he repeats. He exhales loudly and runs a hand through his hair, another nervous tick. “Look, I said I’m sorry, Glad.” 

Her incredulous look makes his face turn red and her rolling eyes tells him that she’s not accepting the apology. “I know you are.” 

“I just - “

“You just?” she spits back. “Come back and think everything is the same?”

“Well…” he scurries for the right words. “Yeah.” 

The wrong words come out.

He didn’t know what he wanted and he sure as hell didn’t want things to be like this. He wanted to turn back time, rewind, go back to when they were neighbours and they were shitty arsed kids who did stupid things. Back when he didn’t run a gang, and she didn’t either. He didn’t want to pry out the fact that she loved him back and have himself panic. “You’re a jerk,” she spits, jabbing his chest. She repeats it, over and over, her face turning red and her lower lip between her teeth. 

He lets her, at least she’s speaking to him again. He holds up his hands in truce. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left…” he takes a steadying breath. “I’m really sorry you never told me the truth. Even though I gave you countless fucking opportunities to tell me in truth or dare -”

“In a game?” she snaps with a roll of her eyes. 

“It’s a game but the rules are fucking clear!”

She stops hitting his chest, eyes set on the ground at her greased up boots, running her wrist over her brow. “I’m not getting into an argument about the rules of truth or dare, what about the princip-”

“Don’t you dare say it’s the principal, the rules are very, very clear.”

“Oh here we go about transparency, huh?”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “You could have told me, but I get it, that’s not the way of Gladys, is it?.”

She chuckles with a shrug. “I guess not, kid,” she says, finally giving up. 

He tilts her chin with his fingers, leaning in to whisper with so many eyes on him, he’s lost track of how many hits he’d have to swing to get them off him. “What do you say, Darlin’? Fresh start?”

Just when her lips are so close, he could almost feel the softness of them, she drops to the ground and picks up a discarded crescent. “This shit isn’t going to fix itself, FP.”

He’s not sure if she means the car, or each other. 

He runs a hand through his hair, exhales loudly and watches her light a cigarette, closing her eyes and blowing smoke to the wind. “You left the trailer and you didn’t even say goodbye…”

She wears an incredulous look. One that seems to scream that she can’t believe he’s standing on her turf so he digs his boots a little deeper into the ground. More due to the fact he’s scared one of her hits will end up with him on the ground. “You’re upset because we fucked and I didn’t say nighty night?”

FP scoffs, but his teeth grit and his eyes roll. The woman presses too many buttons of his at the same time. All at once. Some sort of brain overload. “I didn’t want you to say good night.”

“Then why are you here?”

The brain overload ends up snapping inside of him. “Because we didn’t just _ fuck _, Gladys,” he hisses, leaning closer to her as to not attract the attention of her hulked up side kicks. “You came into my home, you spent time with me, we have a fucking history! That wasn’t just a fuck, Gladys!”

“What was it then?” She snaps back, hand shaking mid drag with reddened cheeks. “Love?” 

He doesn’t reply, instead trying to focus on the fast rise and fall of her chest, the nervous grind of her foot into the dirt. He has never seen Gladys Swan nervous before in his life, but here it was before him as clear as day. “Yeah, maybe it was. Maybe it _ is _.”

Her laugh is humourless and shallow. “You’ve only ever loved two things in your life.”

“And what’s that?”

“Yourself and Alice.”

He sniggers as she puts out the cigarette with the tips of her fingers, a terrible fucking party trick that proves she does everything just to shock people. 

He’s shocked either way. Because Gladys is never wrong but she was wrong about him.

He never loved either of those things. 

He leaves without correcting her, because what’s the fucking point?

* * *

They end up in the same spot with Ghoulies at her sides and Serpents at his. There’s spilt coconut rum and other sweet drinks all over the place inside the trailer that he has no idea who it belongs to, there were too many faces to sort through and Tall Boy was the only one he could pinpoint. He leans on the outside of the trailer, Gladys across standing by a tree with her Ghoulies, but when one of his men takes a swing at one of hers, her eyes zone in on FP and it burns him. 

“You going to sort that out, kid?” she calls from across the yard. “Or am I going to have to?”

FP holds up a hand to the youngest member of the Serpents and Tall Boy takes it as a cue to get the kid away from the Ghoulies. “Now, now, Darlin’,” he drawls, knowing it was going to annoy her to no end, “It’s just a little mishap.” 

Gladys makes her way slowly towards him, her denim skirt over fishnets were so ripped, he licked his lips and watched the gap between her skirts beginning and crops ending widen with every step. “You looking at something you want, FP?” she challenges. 

FP gives a laugh of disdain, jutting his chin, “You offering?”

“Get the kid to apologise to my boy and we’ll see.” 

He straightens out his jacket. “Not happening, Gladys.” 

She takes several steps closer, the white wife beater she has tied up above her navel draws his attention and the way she flutters her eyes from his lips to his eyes with a look of entertainment shows that she knows it. “Since you’ve been gone, FP, things on the Southside have been a little different. As in, since the Serpents have been so quiet, we’ve been in charge.” 

He looks from his boys to Gladys with his jaw dropped. “You’ve always gotta be in charge, don’t you?”

“Someone has to run the show around here, don’t they.” 

He just shrugs. “Looks to me like we might be a match made in heaven,” he replies slowly. “I’m in charge, you like to _ think _ you’re in charge…” he knows he’s exhausted her patience. 

Gladys’ chest rises and falls rapidly. “You’re never in charge,” she snaps back. 

“That’s not what you’ll be saying if you let me take that skirt-”

He’s cut off when she shoves his chest with both hands. “Keep talking,” she pushes. “Go on.”

His entitled smile leaks through, he missed it, her quick comebacks, her sharp demeanour. In this moment, he hates himself for seeing Gladys like this. 

The old her. 

“Come on, Darlin’, you know we’re made for each other…” She twirls her opinel knife with a finesse that FP’s eyes can’t keep up with and her dirty docs dig deeper into the ground. He chuckles, holding up shaky hands in the air in truce. “Look, I won’t fight with a girl, Gladys.”

Before he can watch where the opinel went, his ears are ringing and the familiar crunch of his own nose echoes in his skull.

He falls to the ground, knees first, right hand keeping his face together as if it might fall apart, left hand in the dirt next to her feet. She looks down on him, red lips curling. “Yeah? Well I just did.”

Audible gasps surround them, hisses from Serpents and sniggers from Ghoulies makes Gladys run her slick tongue across her teeth with a hubristic grin and a cocky edge when she bends down to FP level. “That fucking hurt!” He hisses.

“Didn’t I tell you that I’d bring you to your knees?”

FP’s head pounds with shitty comebacks and he watches her knees protrude from split, red fishnets and a chain dangles from her studded belt.

Before he has time to think, he tugs on the belt chain, her unsteady body balancing shakily on her docs falls onto her knees. “Looks like you’re on your knees now, what do ya say?” He hisses in her ear as he leans with him. “You finally gonna shut that pretty mouth? Or do I have to do it for you?”

The second hit of her fist to his balls was worth it, he thinks to himself. He finally shut up Gladys Swan.

The way she clung onto that opinel knife scared him, no matter how many times he tried to tell himself she wouldn’t use it.

They look at each other - eye to eye - and the smirk that runs over her face has FP slumping further into the ground. “Maybe you should shut me up,” she says with a glimmer in her eye. 

He tries not to think of all the ways he could shut her up or what that mouth could do when it wasn’t tearing him to shreds. “You’re going to kill me, Darlin’.”

“That’s the goal.” 

She’s quicker than him, she gets up, pushes up on his shoulders to stand then wraps her fingers in his hair, giving him a view of her panties. 

The bitch likes lace. Go figure. 

* * *

Two chopped up lines just to try the product. Then they’re closer than they’ve ever been when she’s sitting on his lap with his hands on her thighs. His heart races when she tastes like his brand of cigarettes and weirdly, cola, and her thighs are nicely tanned for this time of the year. When she lets his trace patterns on her skin, it’s uncomfortably tender for her sharp words, especially when she’s letting him smooth his hands on her while she tells him how much she hates him. 

Suddenly, she’s hiking up her skirt while he places her on the table top of the Whyte Wyrm, teeth on her neck and her nails digging into his back. He shoves his pants and underwear down, wasting no time in slicking himself between her and angling in slowly. 

She grits her teeth when she’s filled and calls his name when he pushes into her harder and harder, her eyes roll when she begs for both hands around her neck, she returns the favour with both of hers around his neck that leave marks. 

It’s fast and he leaves wet kisses all over her skin. They come at the same time with his sweat dripping down her breasts and him messily on her stomach. She leaves herself all over his neck, marks of her teeth and how much she can’t keep herself away. 

“Damn, I loved that,” he says, slumped over her body, steadying himself on the counter. “I love you…”

He trails off. 

Her face reads loud and clear when he stops. 

Neither of them finish the sentence. And he fucking hates himself. 

She leaves, no promises of when she’d be back because a Ghoulie really shouldn’t be in here anyways. The comedown is dark and daunting, but not as daunting as thinking he’s fucked things up with Gladys. 

* * *

They stand in the empty parking lot of Pop’s. She explains how everything with the Ghoulies seems too hard, it drains her. Drugs run the streets and she runs the drugs. She makes quick jokes about leaving the gang, she makes light comments about starting a new life. She makes a lot of wishes but nothing ever comes of them. Something in him hopes that one day, he could give her what she wanted. 

Gladys sniggers, eyes rolling. “We Ghoulies have a saying that we can’t trust a snake,” she murmurs, flicking ash on the ground. “I’ll cut you a deal. You help me get out of the Ghoulies, I’ll help you forget Alice Smith.”

“Why do you want out from the Ghoulies?” he asks, toothpick bobbing up and down.

Her cigarette drops to the ground, embers clashing on wet concrete and in the same move, she’s back in the pocket of her own leather jacket, one Marlboro between her lips, fingers fumbling with a pack of ten redheads. Three strikes and match is alight. “I’m a Scorpio, FP. To tell you that information, I’d either have to have a heart, or kill you.”

Her smile is sardonic. Sadistic, even. He sees it through the smoke of the cheap brand cigarettes she exhales through her nose. FP sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Kill me then.”

Red lips shine under streetlights. “With pleasure,” she answers, “No amount of bourbon is going to get you to forget Alice, you know…”

FP’s chuckle is humourless and just as dark as Gladys’ air of arrogance. “Oh yeah? And what do you know?” amusement ringing through the empty car park.

Gladys’ tongue runs over her teeth. “I know that you’ll probably fall in love with me.”

“And who’s to say you won’t fall in love with me?!” FP rolls his eyes, sniggering.

“Fuck off,” she snaps back, looking at him sideways. “I don’t have a heart, remember?”

There was something in the way she stood in front of him with rips in her knees and scars on her knuckles that told FP that maybe she wasn’t joking. She put out her third cigarette in a row with the tip of her fingers without flinching even once.

They stand in a silence that’s suffocating. FP was always one to run headfirst into a fight, but he picks and chooses every battle he faces with Gladys. Wars are built whenever he’s with her, that was the go when it came to her. There’s no love if it isn’t worth fighting for, right?

“You’ve got me all wrong.”

“Hmmm?” she questions under dim light, cool air reminding him that he’s very much a part of Riverdale again.

“Alice. She was never the one I needed to forget. It was you.”

And in this moment, she’d usually fight back with how deep his words are, and for lack of understanding anything to do with pretty words, he wonders if she could read between the lines. “Some sort of fairytale shit,” she mumbles in reply. 

“It isn’t, it’s true.”

They stand face to face, Ghoulies on one side, Serpents on the other. In this moment, they share common ground. “Truth or dare?” she asks him more quietly and gentle than he’s ever seen her.

“Truth.”

“Are you telling me the truth? You wanted to forget me?”

“Yes.”

“A cat with nine lives, FP. I keep coming back, there’s no way you can forget me,” she says with a chuckle that scares him.

“Truth or dare?” he asks back.

She sits in the question, waiting several beats before answering with; “Dare.”

“Kiss me.”

Though she’s soft and sweet, gentle lips at first and soft touches of her hands on his arms, the speed picks up with a desperate sigh slipping from her. Teeth click and her hand finds its way to the back of his neck, forcing him closer, clutching onto him tightly. Her teeth nip at his lower lip, she lets go of him only to hook her fingers into his belt loops and forces his hips against her. She leaves a mark on his neck that he feels bruised and tender. “Welcome to Hell, kid,” she says with her tongue in his mouth.

“Yeah, I love you too.”

* * *

Three post sex blunts have her scribbling words on paper that he’s not allowed to look at.

They talk about things they usually would never. It’s funny how he can’t seem to shut Gladys up once she’s on a tangent. Especially a weed one. They talk about how Mary and Fred keep trying for a baby and how Fred’s business is booming. What that must feel like to be free of the chains that bind you to becoming replicas of your parents. She hates the chains. She wants to destroy them. She talks about it with her Ghoulies kutte still on. The irony.

She keeps on about how she wouldn’t ever want her kids to be chained to that as well. FP laughs because she wouldn’t have an ounce of maternal instinct in her. She agrees; kids suck. Snotty nosed bastards. 

“But don’t you ever dream of having a family?” he asks.

She stops scribbling for a moment, a pencil tapping on her front teeth. “Bring a kid into this world? The way it is?”

In ‘_ this world’ _ he knows she means ‘ _ their world’ _ the one she describes as dark and ugly. The one they were born into. “We could change stuff.”

“When you say _ ‘stuff’ _ what do you mean?”

“I mean, we love each other, don’t we?”

She smiles sweetly, the act itself unsettling. “Well ain’t that heartwarming.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

Gladys sighs. “It is,” she replies. “But love isn’t enough to break the cycle, FP.”

“Oh.”

She scratches more words, always looking up to meet his eyes. “If you don’t believe I love you, I’ve got a book full of words right here to prove you wrong.”

She holds onto the book tightly, never letting it go. “Words I’ll never read,” he says with a roll of his eyes. 

“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

“Right,” he concludes, laying back onto threadbare carpet.

She lays back too, with her hand in his. “Kid, if I could choose anyone on this earth to have a family with, just know you’d be a close second.”

“And who would be first?” he challenges.

“Chris Cornell.”

* * *

“Truth or dare?” she asks as they ride off into the sunset in her SS. It’s nowhere near as poetic as she made it out to be, but she’s the one with a way with words. The sunset was murky and helping Gladys out with a Ghoulies drug run was as special as it was going to get and as close to a date as they’d ever get. Even she agreed there was something magical about sitting her SS that she claims is her baby and listening to her chatter about nothing at all. 

“Truth.”

She turns her head to look at him, eyes heavy and concerned. “Do you think we’re going to make it?”

For the first time ever, he feels like she’s asking the question she’s always wanted to know the answer to. Gladys Swan was deep and endless, but her words are always surface level and even after all these years, she barely opens up. But there wasn’t ever a time where he didn’t think he’d fight for her. “Of course.” 

She repeats; “Of course,” under her breath. “I hate this love shit.”

“Why?”

“It means I’d always owe you.”

“That’s not how love works, Gladys,” he answers with a roll of his eyes. 

“Love is some bullshit story made up for people who are dreamers.”

He laughs, running a hand through his hair. “I thought you said you loved me?”

She sighs and it’s heavy and shaky. “I did - I’ve weakened myself.”

“You don’t have to sound so upset about it.”

Gladys smirks to herself. “Love is forever, you know that right?”

He watches her smile repeat under flashing cuts of streetlamps. “Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” she answers.

“I dare you to marry me.”

Gladys’s laugh rings through his ears. “You’ve barely been home a year.” 

“So?” he asks, eyebrows raising. “I’ve known you my entire life, why not?”

“I’m a Ghoulie, you’re a Serpent. What is this? Romeo and Juliet?”

He shrugs, pulling the collar of his kutte up against his neck. “I’m coming on this run with you, you don’t seem to care I’m a Serpent right now!”

“I chose you because I knew you wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone if something went wrong!”

“You’re the one with a knife on you at all times.”

Her smirk widens, “You’re not wrong about that,” she replies quietly, lifting up her skirt to show her opinel tucked in. 

“I love you,” he whispers. 

She turns to meet his eyes for a second before putting them back on the road. “And I love you too, Kid.”

“So what’s the problem? Serpents and Ghoulies aside.” 

“Damn, you really are obsessed with your Romeo and Juliet story - two households both alike in dignity…”

“I dunno what that means.” 

“And I don’t expect you to.” 

She pulls over to the side of the road, stretching her arms out in the cramped space of the car. “So when will you leave the Ghoulies and join me?”

Gladys laughs before leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “You’re on some Romeo and Juliet bullshit. That shit has got to your head.”

“So?”

“So they both end up dead.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave me a comment and I'll owe you for the rest of my life.


	3. Serpent Queen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is it! A thank you to all that read (Kim, Linette lol!) I love you all.  
Ages, cannon and a few other technicalities about pregnancy are out the door in this one because the writers don't know shit.

_ **Serpent Queen** _

* * *

The variation of green is interesting when she sets her mind on it. Lightened hues and darkened borders, crisp folds and the feel of softened paper. Green is everywhere, on the ground and tangled in the sheets. Money was something daddy always kept hidden in the hole in the wall behind his headboard. When she was a kid, money came under the guise of the mechanic shop the Ghoulies used as their facade. She always hated the hold money had over their Ghoulies life, but this was different. 

FP liked parading the wads of cash, he held bundles in his hands and pockets, and when it was only the two of them in the trailer at Sunnyside, it was strewn on the floor and he loved to lay it all over her body while he worshipped it. It was addictive, just like the snow white that they sell in order to get the money. 

Oh, the snake loved cash and the green of the notes matched the green snake on his back. 

Gladys loved the way it feels on her skin and when she’s laying in his bed late at night, forgetting yet another chance to escape back to the protection of the Drive In’s storeroom where all her belongings lived. She realises that most of her most precious items now lived in the cupboard of FP Jones’s home. The one she helped him fill with mundane, everyday things that were necessary to have to create a home. _ Home _. That’s what the trailer feels like now. And the money that he promises is hers too unsettles her - he was building them a home, and that money was what put the roof over their head, the heating in the winter. The food on their table. 

There was more money than she’d ever laid her eyes on before, but it came with a price. The only thing that contrasted against the green of the money was the white of the powder they run. FP might love the money, but he also loved the product and oh, how the world spins when he’s neck deep in dust…

The snake had an addictive nature, she knows it. Momma always spoke about people like him. _ “Addiction is in a person’s nature, Gigi…” _ it was her way of protecting daddy and his reason for driving his fists into walls, she can still smell the whiskey all over the floor. Momma always made excuses for daddy, but never any for FP Senior. She used to look at FP with distaste, always looking down her nose at Senior. _ “Oh he has a _ real _ problem,” _ she’d say. She can still see her momma on her hands and knees, wiping up whiskey. Maybe her addiction was making up excuses for why daddy was so mad…

FP’s chest rises and falls with sleep, a thing that she hates him for, because never did she have the luxury of falling into a slumber that didn’t haunt her with every thought she ever held. He didn’t lay awake in someone else's sheets repeating the thoughts of his sixteen year old self like she does. Sixteen year old Gladys haunts her, reminding her of when they were young and wondering just how exactly they were going to escape her Ghoulies life and his Serpents. FP had always wanted to run away from that life, he was the one who always hated the Southside, he had dreams of leaving and he did. He left and he left the Southside to her and the Ghoulies but daddy always said the Southside is full circle and you can never run away. FP may have come back, but she’s almost sure his sixteen year old self is haunting him. Sixteen year old FP who always despised his father, yet here he was, a King in his own right. 

And that crown fits perfectly on his pretty little head with an ego that surely couldn’t fit inside his body. 

Gladys’s Ghoulies kutte fit her back then, but now, it was a skin she wore. How come when she’s lying in his sheets does she feel like she’s shedding the Ghoulies kutte like a snake sheds their skin? It peels away, it shows her for what she is. Lying in the arms of a Serpent. 

She feels her new skin, one that has _ Serpent _ written all over it. She feels a rattling in her spine, a hiss in the back of her throat. 

In his sleep, FP wraps his arm around her waist, pulling her closer. Close enough to feel his breath on her neck and his heart beating loudly against her, like it’s sitting in her fucking chest.. It’s like his breath lives in her lungs and his heart in her damn ribcage. 

She allows herself to feel him, to ponder on his Southside dreams and the softness of his skin on hers - the roughness of his fingertips grazing against her hips. She allows herself to cling on to the blade that was a gift from her brother, the one that reminds her she’s a Ghoulie by birthright, by kingdom and by heart. 

And when FP pulls her in a little tighter in his sleep, she allows herself the thought that if he ever tries to get any closer to her heart, she’ll fucking use that knife because by birthright, she knows how to skin a snake alive.

The entire world is confusing when you live with one foot in hell and the other in the snake pit. 

* * *

“What are you writing?”

“A story about a town, a small town, and the people who live in the town. From a distance it presents itself like so many small towns all over the world…”

“Doesn’t disclose much does it?... Tommy Topaz announced the birth of his baby girl…” FP says, eyes watching Gladys from the side with a smirk while pouring another drink.

Gladys shrugs, leaning against the wall of the trailer. “Girls are nasty business,” she laughs, “Little bitches that always try to get their way.”

He sniggers, raising an eyebrow and lifting his drink to the air. “To baby Topaz,” he begins. “Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t like a little you running around the place.” 

Gladys runs her tongue along her top teeth, discomfort rising through her spine at the awkward conversation. FP had a thing with bringing up kids, she noticed it more and more in the year he’d been home. Maybe he wanted the opportunity to give his own kid the life he never had. Maybe he wanted to be the father he never had. Maybe he had that paternal pull to his own offspring, the male’s obsession with reproducing to keep the family name going. _ Maybe he’d feel differently if Alice had told him the truth, _ she thinks. But she prays the thought away because loyalty was more important to Gladys than any of FP’s biological make up and need to have an heir, so the thoughts must stay buried. She thinks too much, _ the Topaz’s must be so happy… _

“A little me?” she scoffs, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply. “I can’t think of anything worse.” 

He chuckles again, taking another sip of his drink with his toothpick still bobbing between his lips. “Come on, Glad. They’re not that bad.’

“Children are bad.” 

“What’s so wrong with them?”

It wasn’t the _ them _ so much as the entire, fucked up world that put her off. “If I even thought about a kid, I wouldn’t bring them into the Southside. This is a hell hole that no child should ever have to deal with.”

He looks put out, flexing his fingers in front of his face with a tightened jaw shows her he wants to argue, but he bows down in truce, Gladys knowing he doesn’t want to fight the losing fight. “If it’s some sort of Ghoulies versus Serpents thing, you could just join the Serpents… join the family.”

She scoffs again, rolling her eyes. “Family? Families come with drama.”

“Families come with a level of protection and the Serpents have been protecting you ever since you decided to come play with the big boys. Isn’t that the natural next step? To become part of my family? We’re not the kids you despise so much. The Serpents are keeping the drug business in play, the same business that’s been keeping the car shop afloat. Those mustangs haven’t been keeping your legit business running… we have.”

“Legit business is something the Serpents should aspire to have - what you should aspire to have - look at Freddie!”

“Fred has had opportunities that I haven’t!”

“And he’s offered you the same opportunity!”

“I can’t! Fred doesn’t have the commitments I do!”

“Drugs?!”

_ “Southside!” _

There’s a tone that rings through the room when he hisses _ ‘Southside’. _A sound that tells her there’s no argument, that this is the end. That Southside is the reason for everything that exists. “Southside isn’t a family, FP. It’s a motherfucking curse.” 

“That we were born into, Darlin’, no one can take that away from us,” he whispers against her skin. “So, lead with me. We own it. The empire is ours…” 

The words stick to her skin, his cracked lips graze her neck and when he promises her his very being in its entirety, she finds it hard not to believe him… _ He’s so pretty when he lies, _ she thinks. “Why?” she asks, taking a step back. 

“Because I love you! It just doesn’t seem right that we’re on the opposite sides. Gladys.”

“Cut the bullshit, FP,” she says with a drawl that oozes her entitlement, happy with the way he fidgets uncomfortably in front of her. “You want me to leave the Ghoulies to join your little Boy Scouts?”

She watches him kick the air, chewing on the end of a toothpick before shrugging, an arrogant twist to his obvious on-edge attitude she can feel shaking off him. “I don’t want you to leave the Ghoulies to join the Boy Scouts, nice way to bring us down by the way.”

“Then what are you asking? Because it sure as hell sounds a lot like it to me.”

His lips curl into a smile, eyes tearing her apart in one look. “I’m asking you to _ join _ me.”

Gladys scoffs at the idea, throws her hands up before stomping a foot down that shakes the ground. The sheer fact that he even had the audacity to ask her is laughable - and so she does, laughs in his face. At the idea. And the fucking audacity. “Have you never heard of Loyalty?” she asks. “Or do you want me to spell it out for you? L-O-Y-“

She’s cut off before she has the chance to finish. The fucking audacity. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard about it once or twice, don’t get too wet at the thought that you might be teaching me something,” FP replies with a roll of his eyes.

She shakes at his offhanded retort. Shoving his chest with sharp nails. “Kid, you couldn’t even get me wet if you hosed me down.”

FP sniggers, toothpick rolling on his tongue. “You kinda got it though, Darlin’. Loyalty. Join us, Glad. Let’s be Serpents together. Be loyal to each other, I need you by my side.”

Gladys’s mind spins, on one hand she wants to punch the smug look off his face, on the other, she can’t imagine her world without FP Jones and his dumbass offers. She hates him, she can’t live without him. “What the hell are you? Wanting me to pledge my allegiance to you. Are you the King of England or something?”

His eyes brighten and his laughter echoes through the room. “Serpent King.”

“And what does that make me?” she spits.

“Serpent Queen.”

Gladys’s laugh booms louder than his does, it shakes the entire trailer, head thrown back and eyes screwed shut. “It makes me a fucking_ idiot!”_

“Truth or dare,” he asks, smoothing his hands up her thighs. 

She glares at him which just makes his hands a little rougher, his smirk a little meaner. “Truth,” she answers, breath catching in her throat.

“Tell me the truth…” he says cockily. “Could you ever leave me? Because I promise I can’t ever live without you…that’s why I need you by my side, Darlin’.”

She knows she should be stronger, tougher, more fierce, louder, tear him down, fight him. Prove to him that his words don’t mean shit to her. But somehow, the promises that he gives her have her sitting on his lap with her skirt hiked up around her waist, her hands around his neck. 

A crown waiting for her and a snake whispering in her ear just how good she tastes with her thighs wrapped around his face. When she’s on top, she tightens that grip around his neck again. Queens reign in this Southside story.

Eventually, she thinks of the true answer. No. She won’t leave him. That’s why she’s writing the book, because she can’t even leave this fucking town. 

* * *

Fred and Mary wanted to hug her at the exact same time so she was covered in arms and hair in her mouth when they give her a group hug. She made excuses for FP for why he couldn’t visit. She thinks Mary buys it, she knows Fred doesn’t. She watches a little glimmer die down in him. She knows he misses his friend, she knows FP misses his friend too. But, as it shall be, Southside and Northside never truly mesh. It had never been more obvious than it was now.

Mary and Fred fuss over their baby room. There’s nothing in it yet, but they want to show her around. There’s not much to see, four walls and a door. But the room is warm and it’s safe. It feels nothing like the trailer. Mary’s non-existent bump is still being rubbed regardless. Fred kisses her flat stomach and he asks whether or not Gladys has thought of a family. She tells him no. He kind of assumes that she and FP are a thing and Mary hides a cheeky smile like they’re sixteen all over again losing their virginities. She’s a giggling mess and Gladys can’t help but smile too even though she hates that everyone’s sort of moved on and she’s still wading in stagnant waters. She _drowns_ in them. She can taste the water at the back of her throat. 

Fred peers through the front window, they see a car rolling past. He explains that Alice hates him at the moment for not exchanging Christmas cookies even though it’s still November. He asks if she's seen Alice. Gladys makes up an offhand lie about being too busy at the mechanics to set up a time that fits in with their busy schedules but the truth hurts a lot more than the lie. Alice doesn’t go around the Southside anymore and Gladys doesn’t want to sit in the pristine living room of the Coopers. She can smell the vanilla and rosewater from here at the Andrews. It doesn’t smell anything like the menthols and clove of the old Alice. The one she misses. The one that _escaped_. 

Mary serves tea in cups that aren’t chipped. Fred is tired from a long day of honest work and he still manages to smile. It’s kind and there’s no underlying malice in the way he tells her that maybe she could take up writing, because _it’s really bloody good, Gladys… you have a gift worth sharing. _

Mary knows a publisher in Chicago. Gladys humours the thought. She thanks Mary, but she still has a lot of work to do with it. She thinks about it a bit more as Fred rambles on about the business and how he needs a couple more workers and he was really, really hoping FP would have come over. No one wants to read a book about the wrong side of a hick town. Or women in a man's world. 

“Oh, how are your parents?” Mary asks, all bright eyes and pink lips. “Have you thought about moving to Toledo to be with them?” 

Gladys doesn’t know exactly how to say; _ ‘No, my parents hate me for choosing a snake over the skull, I’m all but dead to them…’ _so instead she says; “Toledo’s not my scene.” 

“So you’re crashing at FP’s? You know you’re welcome to stay with us…” Mary keeps chattering but Gladys can’t keep up with the noise. 

Fred chuckles with squinted eyes. “You’re just like FP,” he grins. “You can’t pull ‘em out of Southside, they always keep coming back home…” 

Her friends let her in even with her Ghoulies kutte on, like it’s part of her makeup. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

Like it’s her goddamn skin. 

* * *

He’s all over her body with his hands. His lips never leave her, just like he promises he won’t. Promises are for people who want to prove that their intentions are good, daddy told her. Promises are just undercover lies. But there’s something about FP that she trusts. Maybe he won’t leave her after all. He does a lot to prove it, she does a lot to not believe it. 

She lights a cigarette in bed, he’s still touching her, as if it would kill him to stop. His breath syncs in time with hers and in times like these, she finds it hard to not believe they’re not the same person. “Truth or dare,” she asks, exhaling smoke through her nose. 

“Truth,” he replies, her lip between his teeth. 

“Just how badly do you want me to join the Serpents?” 

There’s a silence that falls in the room, if she concentrates, she’s almost certain she can hear his brain ticking. His veins pulsing. He looks at her. _Really_ looks at her with his eyes burning into hers, his grip still on her thighs that he doesn’t loosen. She flicks her cigarette into the ashtray next to her, pursing her lips. He cocks an eyebrow, gives her a smirk that she’s tempted to slap off with one hit… “I don’t want you to join the Serpents, Darlin’,” he drawls. “I want you to help me _ lead _.” 

“You’re always talking about how you’re leading, but what sort of gang wants to listen to a boy?” she snaps. 

“I’m twenty three, Glad with more vision than they'd ever have. I’m not a boy. And with the success of you and the Ghoulies, it makes sense that you and I do this together.” 

She pauses. Mind running wild, unable to quieten her thoughts. She isn’t certain of what she wants, but she knows that she doesn’t want to be where FP isn’t. She can’t ignore the rattle in her chest, the hissing in her ear. She knows how far into the snake pit she is and how half of her was now with the guy lying next to her. “That doesn’t answer my question,” she murmurs. 

“If I didn’t want you to join me with all of my heart, do you think I’d almost kill myself every day trying to convince you?”

“You don’t have a heart.” 

“Neither do you,” he shrugs. “That’s why we’re a good team.” 

She lies back, closing her eyes for a brief second, opening them again to look at him. “I better not regret this, kid.” 

FP smiles, kissing her on the cheek. “Serpent Queen,” he mutters. “Fuck, we’ll be invincible. All you have to do now is the dance....”

She sniggers as her fingers dance over his shoulder blades. “I’m not doing the dance, FP.”

“What?” the disbelief in his voice all too obvious.

The Serpent dance was reserved for the women. The women that wanted a place in the Serpents. The women who bow down, who listen intently, who follow the orders. That's not her, she knows in her heart, in her gut and soul that it’s not her. “I’m going to walk the Gauntlet,” she tells him. 

He doesn’t bat an eye, no stopping her, no hesitation or reluctance. He clears his throat and nods. “This is why I love you, Glad.” 

She sighs, sucking up courage through her teeth. “I love you too,” she says with her entire heart.

She rolls him over on to his back, wraps her hands around his throat and tightens. He might have her as his new Serpent Queen, but she has his entire life in her hands. 

Only a Queen could kill. She lets him draw a breath. Only if she feels like it. 

* * *

“Truth or dare?” she asks.

FP scowls, chewing on the end of his toothpick. “Truth.” 

“Are you scared I’m going to get hurt?” 

Gladys watches FP, watching the thoughts and answers calculating in his head. “A little bit. I don’t want to see you get hurt.” 

She sniggers. “Don’t worry about me, Princess.” 

The Whyte Wyrm doesn’t smell any different to the clubhouse behind the mechanics but there’s definitely a different feel in here. It’s dark with whispers running across the walls, she hears her name coming from every different direction wondering what a Ghoulie was doing in their home. She loves the attention and she doesn’t drop her head down once. 

Already the guys have eyes on her skin, undressing her with just their glares, she can feel their teeth on her skin and their lips on her neck with the way they sip their drinks. Beer filled laughs creep up her spine and she can already hear their sneers. She grips her knife tighter, she smiles even bigger. She’ll remove limbs if she has to. 

“You gonna get up there, baby,” an older member whispers in her ear. “I’ll help you take your shirt off…” 

Gladys spins on her heels, whipping out her knife, she twirls it between her fingers before getting the guy against the wall with her forearm, knife dancing just above the thin skin of his neck. “Does it look like I need help?” 

The Whyte Wyrm falls silent, nothing but the sound of glass hitting the benches and gasps echoing around her. She doesn’t care that all eyes are on her, burning through her skin. All she cares about is how quickly her opinel knife can cut through skin, just how quickly she can run out of the bar without someone catching her. Just how quickly she can cut the words out of the guys throat or maybe he’ll just simply take them back, cowering in fear, scrambling to pick up the words he so carelessly threw at her. 

Before she knows what’s happening, FP is on her, pulling her back by the shoulder. “Shit, Glad,” he hisses. “What the fuck are you doing?” 

Gladys doesn’t care for his hissed words or the look he gives her that shows his annoyance, she’ll turn the knife on him just as quickly if he’s not careful. Frank Fogarty snickers just behind FP and she can see him just over FP’s shoulder. “Tell your boys not to touch me,” she spits back at him. “Or I will.”

He licks his lips, biting down on his lower one before agreeing with a nod. “Anyone that touches Gladys has to answer to me!” he calls through the bar. He’s met with grunts and groans, but the message is out there now. FP shoots a glare at Frank, turning back at her he whispers. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks. 

She nods. She’s never been surer in her life. 

FP clears his throat, kicking the ground, he takes the toothpick out of his mouth. “Gladys will be joining us today!”

The crowd cries, some with pride, others with hate. She keeps her mouth shut, but her chest swells, right down in the thick of it in the part where she stores all the fear that fuels her, all the uncertainty that guides her. She’ll be reigning in no time. 

“She’s going to the dance,” Frank mumbles to an abnormally tall friend that looms next to him. 

FP chuckles deeply. “No dance today, Frankie,” he answers. “Gladys will be walking the Gauntlet!” he calls. 

Silence fills the bar, it hushes everyone, in the dark corners, scattered over tables. Straightening herself up, she smiles to the crowd. The look of disbelief only fuels her fire. 

FP turns to her. “You’ve got this,” he tells her but she doesn’t need the pep talk. 

She was born to fight the Serpents, this is what Ghoulies are made of, she reminds herself. 

Walking out the back of the bar, she’s followed by a swarm. Whispers wash over her, sniggers from the older members, pure, disgusted disbelief from the others. Too many mentions of her Ghoulies heritage. They may hate it, but the Ghoulie in her is what brought her here today. They might fight for their Serpent honour, but Gladys knows she’s got enough of her own fight in her. All dirty and menacing. 

The tall one that’s even taller than Tall Boy saunters over with a smirk and a tilt in his step. “You better hope you come out alive, Ghoulie,” he says quietly. “Topaz has it in for anyone any chick that tries to walk the Gauntlet and Peabody doesn’t know about anything that’s fair…” 

  
There’s only four old gal Serpents that were willing to hold the Gauntlet. The only ones who seem to think they have enough strength to take her on. Pearl Peabody is the first to present herself, short but mean. She licks her lips. “You should have just chosen the dance…” she laughs. “Wouldn’t want to smack the smile out of you.” 

There’s an pretty one, Tommy Topaz’s sister whose smile is too kind to be wanting to do this, but Gladys can sense there’s more to her and maybe she was born into the pit too. She doesn’t say anything, just rubs her hands together. Preparing. 

Two more old girls, all weathered and worn. Skin like leather and voices like hags. They’ve done this before, Gladys can tell. Maybe they were like her and chose the Gauntlet over the dance. Her mind thinks of Alice and how she’d done the dance all those years ago. Poor, pretty Alice…

There are words spoken, she can’t really hear them over the adrenaline and the sheer rush of the Gauntlet. People yell from all directions but her eyes settle on concentrating down the centre of the line. She doesn’t care for the announcement, or the apparent pride FP has in her. She’s tougher than all of them, more meaner, tougher, clever. They have no idea what she’s capable of, she knows they don’t. 

She can see the rise that she’s getting out of them. The nervous bounce in their steps, the way they bare their teeth and seem to hiss like the snakes they are. She doesn’t have any fear in her, she keeps it tucked away. They might be ready, but there’s something to be said for the girl who ran the Ghoulies. She’s done this before, bigger and better than ever before. And the women who struck her were meaner than any Serpent, the Ghoulies women are wild and fierce. This Gauntlet will be a walk in the park.

There’s blues and reds that shine around her, they already start but that’s all she notices when she takes the first hit. The colours of the flashing lights from the signage of the Whyte Wyrm. They flicker on and off and the colours shine in a puddle ahead, on the pale skin of people surrounding her. 

The second hit, she feels in her bones. Her shoulder moves, bones on bones and she hears the heckles of the women taking their turn. Her head jerks back and her teeth grit together, but she takes it. 

The rest all feel the same. Gladys’s breath is knocked out, teeth chattering, blood boiling hit after hit. “You can’t take it, can you?” Pearl taunts. The taunts hurt. Gladys is sure of that. The taunts hurt more than the hits. 

Her breath takes a moment to come back to her and when it does, she takes it in her lungs before opening her eyes. “Is that all you got?” she hisses back. 

Not striking back causes Gladys’s skin to feel tight. It makes her temples pulse and the twitch in her hands too hard to ignore. The hisses surround her but all she can hear are the whispers, the laughs. The taunts that are all but tearing her skin apart. 

Her jaw tightens too, keeping her teeth together and focusing on that seems to be the only thing that keeps the twitch in her fists at bay. She imagines the sweet relief of lifting her fist, putting it against the blue of Pearl’s eyes. Wondering if there’d be the sound of flesh pounding on flesh, god, if she could only have one hit...

Pearl takes one look at Gladys, a smile creeping on her face. “Your face is too pretty to ruin,” she says, taking another swing at her. 

She can’t take it anymore. The restraint is gone, her mind tells her to keep on going. The rattling comes back, bigger, louder, harsher than ever, telling her to strike. There’s a twitch in her right fist that she can’t ignore, a drive that creeps up in her. Then, her mind falls blank. 

Before she realises what she’s doing, her arm swings and her fist drives itself into Pearl’s face, almost in slow motion, Gladys sees it. Her jaw moves slowly in her skin, her eyes close, her teeth chatter together and her entire body twists and turns, falling to the ground with a thud. The feeling of unleashing, the freedom from the releasing of her chains makes her feel like she’s rising above everyone else. There’s a silence that rings around her, sharp intakes of breath and gasps of shock. It makes her smile, tasting her own blood sitting on her tongue. 

Gladys feels her pride rising, burning up her legs, straightening her back, aching in her fist and flushing over her cheeks. She stands over the lying form of Pearl Peabody with a grin and aching bones. Spitting by her side, she offers Pearl her hand to grab. 

Pearl eyes it before grabbing it with one hand and holding onto her jaw with the other, finding her balance. Gladys pulls her in closely, whispering against her hair she says; “Fuck with me again, baby, and I’ll rip the skin right off of you.” 

She notices Pearl’s eyes dart to FP. “FP wouldn’t allow that.” 

Gladys’s snigger is acidic. “Fuck your Serpent King,” she tells her. “I’m in charge now.” 

FP and Tall Boy hurry over, draping the Serpents kutte over her shoulders, everyone cheers loudly, spilt whiskey falls to the ground and clapping sounds around the yard. The eyes no longer burn on her, they _ fear _ her. The look they all give her is a look of longing, desperation. Pure fucking torture. 

FP kisses her, wiping blood from her lip he says; “You’ve gone where no other Serpent has gone before, hitting Pearl like that.” 

She nods, pushing her arms through the sleeves of her new skin. “Yeah,” she agrees. “Because I’m more than just a Serpent.” 

She can feel it now, the reason why FP loves being the Serpent King. Why he wears his crown with a pride that she could never understand. 

The view is so pretty from the top of the castle. Power is sexy when it’s paired with _ fear _. 

* * *

She never wants to leave the train tracks. Of that, she’s certain. She wants to live in the feeling of nostalgia, she wants to live in the long grass and smoke blunts until eternity turns to ashes. She doesn’t want it ever to end. She wants to lie here with Alice next to her until the world turns black. 

Alice had left Polly with Hal and has a belly that’s grown but not as much as Mary’s has. Alice bitches about Mary too much and it makes Gladys feel bad because Mary is the only one that still gives her the time of day, but today is different. Today of all days, she knows Alice would make up for every second lost and make it feel like a lifetime’s worth of attention. 

Six years ago Alice told Gladys a secret that she made her promise she’d take to her grave. Back then, she always assumed she’d see the grave a lot sooner than most so the promise she made didn’t seem like a difficult feat. But now, she feels like maybe she’ll see an entire life and so, she carries the secret alongside her heart everywhere she goes. 

Alice has a bright, shiny life. She has a husband that loves her, a pretty little girl with big, blue eyes and a pink smile. Blonde hair that matches Alice’s big girl, journalist blonde hair and not her old school, Southside dirty blonde. But Gladys can see it, the weight of Southside on Alice’s shoulders and the memories that come along with it. But today, they don’t talk about it because it just reminds them both that one of them still lives it and the other got away. 

Instead, they light a number 6 candle, they wish for good health, happiness, a loving family and they place it on a cupcake. And they don’t speak anymore on that either. 

“Can you tell me one thing, Glad?” Alice murmurs, lying next to the train tracks, watching Gladys smoke a post blunt cigarette. 

“One thing and one thing only.” 

Alice shakes her head with a smile. “Do you love FP?”

Gladys doesn’t know a lot about love. When she was a kid, she could have sworn she loved Alice. She loved the way her parents were happy when things were okay and she loved the small presents her brother used to buy her. She loved Mrs Andrews waffles and Mary’s mom when she let her stay over. She loved every moment that she and Alice spent on opposite sides of the tracks and she loved when FP would visit her at night so she wouldn’t feel alone when her parents were doing runs. 

She loves when FP smiles at her when she threatens him, she loves the way his hands fit perfectly in the dips of her hips and how he gets mad when she proves him wrong. How even when she’s storming out, down the road away from the trailer he runs after her and how when she forgets to eat, he attempts cooking. How he still wants to play truth or dare after fourteen years and how he fought to get her to become a Serpent. 

“I love him,” she says, exhaling loudly, watching the cloud of smoke roll past. 

Alice smiles to the sun. “I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy, Gladys.” 

“I’m happy, Al,” she tells her. What she doesn’t say is how much she misses her though. And how much she’s needed her over time. “Do you love Hal?” 

Her eyes light up, the smile Gladys remembers from when they were kids shows and she feels fourteen all over again. “I love him so much, I wish you guys would get to know each other.” 

Gladys promises that she’ll get to know him, this promise, she will not keep. Something tells her that getting to know Kurt Cobain like they always wanted to seems like an easier task. At least they’d have more in common. 

Alice wants to read Gladys’s writing, so she lets her. Alice knows about the town. The small town. And what it’s like to be in the town. 

* * *

FP had promised her the world and if the world was the Riverdale Registry Office, then the world, she received. 

They rode on the back of his bike. He stopped half way into Riverdale, did a line on the seat of the Triumph and she did him just as quickly. Her mind doesn’t work in straight lines, it’s all crooked and curved and somehow, he gets tangled in it too. When he asked her to marry him, she couldn’t say no. His messy mixed well with her untidy and somehow it turned into a fucked up love that she wanted to have for the rest of forever. 

They were both late, Mary and Fred were on time. She wore red, he wore blue and both FP and Gladys wore black. Mary hated her, she could tell. 

There were papers everywhere, even on the day that was about them, he wore his Serpents kutte. He signed all the papers with his Serpents kutte on and his toothpick in his mouth while whispering to her. “We’ll be together forever, Darlin’...” 

Mary fussed over Gladys’s dress, struggling to bend down with her newly swelling belly. All black and lacy with long sleeves and cigarette burns in the body. Fred had tears in his eyes as he watched them, a smile so big it almost calmed her nerves. FP didn’t bother to tell anyone, he didn’t know where his dad was, he didn’t bother about anyone else in the Serpents. 

Gladys kept her eyes on the door. Just in case. Just incase Alice decided to come or her parents made the trip, eventually she realised the door wasn’t going to open and her smile faltered just the tiniest bit. Not too much, she was used to disappointment. 

Few words are said, or words that she could actually focus on. Being lost in the thoughts of forever while standing in front of a person who’s half of your very essence is confronting. Especially when you didn’t think you’d make it to this point. 

When FP says; “I promise to love you forever and ever, Glad. You’re my ride or die and I’d die without you.” 

She meets him with; “You were the truth I dared to accept and I’ll love you forever too.”

Gladys feels her heart beat stop, her lungs empty, blood pauses in her veins when he kisses her. This was her forever, and forever may she reign.

* * *

“Hello?” The voice makes her eyes water. She doesn’t know how to reply but she knows he hates people who waste time. The nerves take over and shake her to the very core. “Who’s there?” 

Gladys clears her throat. “Daddy… it’s me.” The silence on the other end speaks louder than any words. She can hear a draw in of a cigarette, the sound of a coffee cup being set down next to him. “It’s Gladys.” 

There’s still a silence that feels like it’s cutting into her skin. She regrets making the phone call, but over a year of not speaking scared her. At times, she feels alone without her family. She misses them. She wants to know she’s still in their thoughts. 

“What do you want?”

She doesn’t know what she wants. Maybe she wants to know that momma’s okay. That daddy’s still around and that Toledo is treating them well. She wants to know, because she needs to know she’s made the right choice of living without them. “How have you been?” she says, trying to keep her voice light. “It’s been so long.” 

“You’ve been running with the snakes, Gladys. I knew from the moment you made friends with them when you were a kid that this was going to happen. Something terrible. What a fucking disgrace!” 

She can hear him shaking on the other end and she wonders if he can hear it from her end too. She can almost see the vein pulsing in his temple the way he’d be pointing at her as he snaps. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but she feels her heart shattering regardless. She wanted to tell him about all about her new bike, Harley, Sportster. The new deal the Serpents have cut with the Ghoulies and how the new runs work with the new borders around Greendale. She wants to tell him that she’s okay, if he was wondering. That she and FP are in love, funny huh? Because he’d always told her love was for the weak. “If choosing love over anything else is a disgrace, so be it,” she mumbles. 

Daddy pauses on the end of the phone, his heavy breaths sound through the phone that make the hairs on the back of Gladys’s neck stand up. “Gladys Jones,” he says thickly. “The Serpent Queen.”

The colour drains from her face. 

* * *

There’s a young girl all scared with shaky knees and a pale face. Her hair falls into her eyes that are rimmed with black. She looks just like her big sister and Pearl is oh so proud to have her sister doing the dance. 

There’s whistles through the bar, she may be sixteen but the fear that runs through her is younger, more pure. She’s scared. 

“Hurry up!” Pearl hisses to the young girl, storming away when she can see her sister shaking. Not wanting to deal with the embarrassment. 

There’s an unwanted hand that lands on the young girls skin, Gladys can almost feel it too. All clammy and rough. She flinches away. “Get your fucking hands off, Muggs!” Gladys calls through the Whyte Wyrm. 

The bar falls silent, Muggs drops his hand as if he’s been burnt and FP cackles from behind her, downing a bourbon before slamming the glass down empty, ushering the girl behind the bar with just his fingers for a refill. All eyes avoid Gladys as she stands up, making her way through the crowd to the stage. 

The girl is pretty, Serpent by birth and half the amount of guts that her sister has. “What’s your name, darling?” she asks, brushing the girl’s hair out of her eyes. 

“Penny Peabody,” she answers. 

Gladys nods. “I’ll make sure no one touches you, but you gotta get up there and do that dance if you want in with the snakes.” 

The girl shakes a little but she nods, straightening her back, she climbs the steps and Gladys makes her way back to her seat closest to the bar. 

FP leans into her ear, smelling of bourbon and coke, a slippery smile against her skin. “I love it when you lead, Darlin’,” he tells her. “None of us would survive without you in control.”

“You mean you wouldn’t survive without me in control.” 

“All the same,” he mumbles. “It would kill me to not be with you.” 

Gladys watches the Serpents watch Penny up on the stage but FP’s eyes are all on her, running his hand over her thighs. He may have given her the title of the Queen of Southside, but she knows she’s the Queen of his heart. 

And how she loves ruling with an iron fist. 

* * *

When she had told him, FP wouldn’t let her go. There was a pride in him. It ran deeper than his heart, than his dreams and wants. It ran deeper than his loyalty to Southside and even his loyalty to her. It was in his bloodstream. In his blood. It was under his skin and in the makeup of his very being. There was no greater joy to him. 

_ “I’m going to be a father…” _

She’d ignored the signs. Late is late until it’s _too _ late. The sickness that grew in her disappeared and came back every morning. For once, she prayed. On her hands and knees. She didn’t want this. She _ couldn’t _. For the first time in her life she feels real fear. The one that haunts you and shows itself in your thoughts. She felt it. 

FP had shouted with excitement, held her hands to his lips and promised her that everything would change now, that life was going to be better and the Serpents would help her through everything, because that’s what families do. Promises always sound pretty in his mouth. And so she trusts him. But she still doesn’t know what to do. Or she _ does _. But she knows she’ll have the baby anyway. 

Now, they lay in their bed at the Sunnyside trailer park. He holds her hand as he smiles to the ceiling, exhaling the smoke of a blunt into the sky. She watches the smoke twist and twirl. She worries about too much, he doesn’t worry about anything at all. “My son,” he murmurs. “_ Our _ son, Darlin’.”

Gladys sniggers, rolling her eyes. “Truth or dare?” 

“Dare.” 

“I dare you to make changes. For us. For your family.” 

“Done,” he answers. But she knows there’s thousands worth of dusty white powder in the kitchen. She knows that only an hour ago, he walked into the trailer with someone else's blood on him. That there’s a car at the bottom of Sweet Water that has her all over it. But, truth or dare was something neither of them could not take seriously, so she has to trust in herself, in him, in their love that this would be enough. 

“Good,” is all she says, placing her lips against his cheek. 

He turns to her, eyes bloodshot and his smile all lazy. “Truth or dare.” 

“Truth.” 

“Why are you so scared of having the baby?” 

She’s scared of the snake pit, of the brutishness of everything around them, that their love won’t be enough to raise a kid, that their life was signing him up for a life that would look no different to theirs. “I’m not,” she tells him. 

He rolls onto his side, kissing her gently on the lips. “You’re a fucking terrible liar.” 

“I’m not lying,” she snaps. “Do you know why I’m not scared?”

“Why?” 

She watches him, eyelashes batting, chewing on his bottom lip and fingers on her skin. “Because I know I’m in charge. I’m the writer of this Southside story.” 

Gladys knows that FP wants to build his Kingdom, to reign with all in fear of him. He wanted pride, the fame and the glory with his son at his side.

But one thing Gladys was certain of, she wouldn’t give him the Prince. No son of hers would walk the Gauntlet, she wouldn’t see the fear in her son’s eye or watch the brightness drain out of them just to be replaced with the eyes of a Serpent. She wouldn’t watch him go up in flames, watch him become a man too soon or watch him question whether or not the Serpent life was the path he was going to take. 

She refuses. 

Queens may reign, but a mother’s love conquers all. 

And she'd fucking kill a man before letting her son in this life. 

Times have to change and Gladys knows it. She watches the Serpent at her side, all bursting with pride with his hands on her stomach. Her son won’t be born into the snake pit like he was. She knows what she has to do, it’s what she does best.   
  
She’ll lead. She’ll lead him out of this life, for the sake of her son.

She’ll lead FP with a knife to his throat if she has to. There’ll be an end to this Southside story.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got more sad shit coming up for these two so ya know, stay tuned?


End file.
